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THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

OR 

THE GOD OF SCIENCE 

AND 

THE ILLUSION OF SELF 

An Interpretation of the Philosophy, Religion, 
and Ethics of a Rational and Scientific Monism 



BY 

ALFRED WARD SMITH 

Author of "A New Theory of Evolution," 

"The Evolution of Beauty," etc. 



"As wider skies break on man's view, 
God greatens in his growing mind; 
Each age he dreams his God anew, 
And leaves his older God behind. 
He sees the boundless scheme dilate 
In star and blossom, sky and clod; 
And as his universe grows great, 
He dreams for it a greater God." 

— Chadwick. 




BOSTON 

SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY 

1914 



<*. 



^1 



Copyright, 1914 
Sherman, French & Company 

SEP II 19(4 

©CI.A380284 



"If the king goes mad, and goes about to find the king 
in his own country, he will never find him, because he is 
the king himself. It is better that we know we are the 
king and give up this fool's search after the king." 

Vivekananda. 

"What doest thou now, looking Godward to cry, 
* I am I, Thou are Thou; I am low, Thou art high '? 
I am Thou that thou seekest to find Him; 
Find thou but Thyself, Thou art I." 

Swinburne. 

" A man who disbelieves in his own divinity is an atheist." 

Vedanta. 

"And a man who doubts his own Godhood is an infidel, 
for in us God lives and moves and has His being, just as 
* in Him we live and move and have our being.' " 

" Here in the Light, I am I, and Thou art Thou; but out 
there in the surrounding dark, you and I and God are One." 

Prof. Carpenter. 

"You truly are one with God, part of His life; He is 
the very soul of your soul." 

Prof. Boyoe. 

" What is this intellectual love of God but the love where- 
with God loves Himself." 

Spinoza. 

"He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father," for, "I 
and the Father are One," and, " In that day ye shall know 
that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you," and 
"Whatsoever ye do to the least of these my little ones, ye 
do it also unto me " ; " That they may be one, even as thou, 
Father, art in me and I in Thee, may they also be in us," 
for " I in them, and Thou in me that they may be perfected 
into One." 

Jetui {John 10, 14 and 18). 



"Nothing in the world is single 
All things by a Law Divine 
In one another's being mingle." 

Shelley. 

" One undivided Soul of many a soul 
Whose nature is its own Divine Control 
Where all things flow to all 
As rivers to the sea." 

Shelley. 

" Are the mountains, waves and stars 
A part of me and of my soul 
As I of them? " 

Byron. 

" The heart and soul of all men being one, this bitterness 
of his and mine ceases. His is mine, I am my brother, and 
my brother is me." 

Emerson. 

"The pettiness, the feebleness, the squalor of the sense 
of being * Me ' was too evident. In that new world the 
craving for personality is seen to be a sordid lust of 
the flesh. They were in me, I was they, and we were * It.* 
The All now absorbed the Many. It had engulfed all hu- 
man individualities and entities, so that personality had 
ceased to have existence or meaning." 

Frederick Harrison. 

"The belief in individuality is the doctrine of fools." 

Vedanta. 

" Tho' difference be none, I am of Thee ; 
Not Thou, O Lord, of me; 
For of the Sea, is verily the wave; 
Not of the wave the Sea." 

Sankara. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Introduction i 

I The World op Illusion .... 1 

II The Evolution of the Many out op 

the One 31 

III The Unifying Tendency of Science . 36 

IV The Unifying Tendency of Philoso- 

phy 47 

V The Dynamic and Diffusive Charac- 
ter of all Being 55 

VI The Evolution of Social Bodies . . 61 

VII The Evolution of Social Minds . . 72 

VIII The Dynamic Nature of the Mind . 88 

IX The Illusion of Memory .... 101 

X The Cosmic Ego 112 

XI The Social Ego 115 

XII The Ethics of Monism 145 

XIII The God who Finds himself . . .157 

XIV The God who Realizes and Perfects 

himself 170 



INTRODUCTION 

THE GOD WHO FINDS HIMSELF, OR THE SELF- 
DISCOVERY, SELF-KNOWLEDGE AND SELF-RE- 
ALIZATION OF THE ONE AND ONLY REAL 
BEING OF THE WORLD. 

The Spirit of the universe is eternally striv- 
ing to realize and find itself in the world and man. 
Self-realization, self-discovery and striving is the 
law of God's life just as certainly as it is of man's. 
In fact, it is the law of man's partial and earthly 
life, only because it is originally the law of God's 
whole and universal existence. It is man's duty 
to strive and realize himself, only because it is 
primarily the law of God's whole universe to strive 
and realize itself. The law of cosmic evolution, 
in truth, is nothing but the law of the striving 
towards self-realization of the universal Being or 
God of the world. Evolution is the fact and 
principle of God's endless seeking and striving 
towards self-development, self-discovery, self-real- 
ization and self-perfection. Evolution signifies 
the self-realization of God, and hence it is a law 
of self-realization to man because he is, in truth, 
but a part, — organ and function of the divine 
whole. The Spirit of the universe is always seek- 
ing to find itself, and always striving to realize 
itself in the life of man. But man, who is a 
product of the evolutionary process, grows intel- 



ii THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

ligent and enlightened only by slow degrees. He 
is primitively but an intellectual and spiritual 
child, and grows to mental maturity and spiritual 
manhood only by steps and stages. He is at 
first the inevitable victim of ignorance, stupidity, 
and fear; of mental immaturity and spiritual 
childishness. He is easily led astray into false 
and plausible pathways that lead him away from 
his true self and true God, and lure him on to the 
belief in a false self and in false and futile gods. 
He thus becomes the inevitable and innocent dupe 
of illusions and superstitions at a certain early 
stage of his mental and spiritual career, and it is 
as appropriate to this period of man's mental 
and religious life that the following parable of 
the Swami Vivekananda applies. 

" If the king goes mad," he says, " and goes 
about to find the king in his own country, he will 
never find him, because he is the king himself. It 
is better that we know we are the king, and give 
up this fool's search after the king." 

This parable of the Hindu monk and philos- 
opher gives the keynote to the following discus- 
sion. Its meaning is perfectly simple and plain, 
and, briefly interpreted, it would read like this: 
If the God of the world, — or, as Monism claims, 
the one and only real and complete Being of the 
world, — is blind and ignorant in its human form 
of its own very self-hood, and goes groping to 
find some other being than itself as a whole, it 
will never find it, because this other and second 



INTRODUCTION iii 

being is unreal, and exists only in its own be- 
clouded mind and immature imagination. It is 
better, therefore, that this one and only real Be- 
ing shall know, in its human form, that it is God, 
and give up this foolish and futile search after 
an imaginary God outside and beyond itself, as 
a universal and organic whole. 

Still more fully interpreted and understood, 
this Hindu parable would mean this: The one 
and only Being of the world, — the infinite, eter- 
nal, and all-embracing organism of the universe, — 
exists: here on this earth and in the mind of man 
as an evolving, slowly learning, immature, and 
groping intelligence. It is still in its period of 
childhood, or immaturity ; its mental eyes are still 
half-closed; it sees nothing clearly and truly as 
yet. Everything is vague, dim, shadowy, and un- 
certain. It is the credulous and uncritical victim 
of illusions, appearances, and imaginations. It 
does not even see or know itself truly ; it does not 
know what it is, or where it is, or why it is. (And 
to an intelligent being no greater spiritual trag- 
edy is conceivable than this. This is the supreme 
tragedy of human life.) It is all at sea. It can- 
not locate or orient itself, or get its true bearings 
in the vast and vague ocean of being. It cannot 
truly find itself, see itself, or know itself. It is 
a lost being, because it is still a half-blind eye, 
and a half-grown intelligence. It has not yet 
come to its full, mature intelligence, nor to its 
full, open, and unclouded vision. It has been for 



iv THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

ages groping in the dark, grasping at shadows, 
and searching for the imaginary, non-existent, 
and impossible creatures of its imaginations, fears, 
and hopes ; and never has it succeeded in finding 
or securing them because, forsooth, they did not 
exist except in its own beclouded and undeveloped 
mind; and, further, because, as it is beginning to 
know, the only real being that exists is itself; 
that is, its whole, universal self; and man exists 
here on earth as the brain and consciousness, the 
head and intelligence of the universal cosmic or- 
ganism, whose evolving and slowly maturing 
organ, structure, and psychic function it is. Out- 
side of this perfect, indivisible, all-embracing 
cosmic organism, of which man is a psychic organ, 
no other and second being exists, as man is be- 
ginning to surmise, or to know. 

The period must eventually come, in the normal 
growth and evolution of the human, and earthly 
mind of the universe, when, reaching towards its 
intellectual maturity and spiritual manhood, it 
will finally, definitely, and clearly find itself, and 
know itself and its own real world. The cosmic 
intelligence manifested here on this earth in the 
evolving, growing, and maturing mind of man 
must finally discover, when it reaches its full pow- 
ers, — maturity and manhood, — the gross decep- 
tions and plausible illusions of which it has been 
the childish and credulous victim in the past and 
early periods and stages of its growth and devel- 
opment. And then it will see and know, as with 



INTRODUCTION v 

a truer and higher vision, that the other and im- 
aginary beings it was seeking, — the other and 
impossible gods it was groping after, — were 
nothing but the ghostly shadows of itself and its 
cosmic organism as a unitary, indivisible, and 
perfect whole. The God outside the world, it will 
finally find, is only the ghostly shadow of the real, 
living, and conscious God within. 

The mad king of the Hindu parable, after his 
native reason has been restored, finds that he him- 
self is the king that he, in his delusion, has been 
seeking. And so he gives up his delusive and 
futile search for an imaginary, impossible, and 
non-existent king that existed only in his clouded 
mind and imagination. And so the king, his rea- 
son being fully restored, finds himself at last, but 
never did he find, and never would he find, that 
other, imaginary king which existed only in his 
diseased imagination, and which was only a ghostly 
shadow and reflection of himself. 

So the cosmic being and intelligence manifested 
here on this earth in the growing and maturing 
mind of man is finally coming, in the normal course 
of its growth and evolution, to its full maturity, 
and intellectual and spiritual manhood ; and as 
it does so it is beginning to find itself, and know 
itself and its own real world of being. Man, as 
the human brain and the earthly mind of the cos- 
mic organism, is beginning to find that this true 
cosmic organism of which he is the true psychic 
organ and spiritual function is the true Being, 



vi THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

the true God, that he, in his intellectual immatur- 
ity and spiritual childishness, has so long been 
seeking elsewhere, outside, and always in vain. 
Always in vain has been his search for this other 
being outside, because this other being existed 
only in his own immature and childish mind, and 
was nothing but the ghostly apparition and re- 
flection of himself and his own real world as a 
unitary whole. 

As the mad king of the parable, after his native 
reason had been restored and he had found him- 
self, gave up his mad and fruitless search for an 
imaginary king, so the cosmic being and intel- 
ligence manifested in and through the mind of 
man, — now that it is coming, in the due and nor- 
mal course of its evolutionary growth, to the full 
and perfect maturity and manhood of its reason 
and spiritual powers, and is beginning to clearly 
and surely find itself and know itself, — is also 
beginning to give up its immature, childish, and 
fruitless search after an imaginary and impossible 
Being and God outside of itself and its real world 
as an organic and perfect whole. For it is be- 
ginning to see clearly, surely, and finally that this 
vast and varied cosmic organism of which it is 
a spiritual organ and function is the one and only 
possible Being that exists ; and the one and only 
possible God there is. And so the time is coming, 
and has already come for some, when it will be 
better, far better, that man should know that he 
and his real world are God and should give up for 



INTRODUCTION vii 

good and forever his delusive and childish search 
for a shadowy, ghostly, and imaginary God oui> 
side the universe and the life of man. 

So God, — the infinite, eternal and perfect 
organism of the universe, — through man and in 
man, as through and in his earthly mind and hu- 
man brain, is beginning at last to find himself 
and know himself; and to find and know himself 
as God, as the supreme, one, and only Being of 
the world. Man is an eye of the universe, 
through which it sees itself clearly and surely at 
last, and perceives itself divine. Man is a brain 
and mind of the cosmic organism as a whole, 
through which, at last, it clearly and surely knows 
itself, and knows itself divine. Here, on this 
earth and in the mind of man, the universe be- 
comes conscious and self-conscious, and finds and 
knows itself. Man is a head upon the cosmic 
body, a mind within the cosmic brain, an eye 
within the cosmic skull; and through this human 
head and brain, this earthly eye and mind, the 
cosmos sees, and finds itself, and knows itself at 
last. When man thinks, the cosmos thinks ; and 
when man knows, the cosmos knows ; and when 
man finds and knows and realizes himself, then the 
Universe finds and knows and realizes itself. For 
man is not one being and the Universe another, but 
they are one, — as organ and organism are one, 
as brain and body, as part and whole, as flower 
and plant are one, — one indivisible, cooperative, 
and organic whole. 



viii THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

As the poet Shelley said : 

" I am the Eye, with which the Universe 
Beholds itself, and knows itself divine." 

As the eye and brain is to the whole human body ; 
as the rose is to the rosebush ; as the little carbon 
filament in the electric lamp is to the whole light- 
ing system; so is man, — the cosmic organ and 
function, — to the whole cooperative cosmic 
organism. As the whole human body displays its 
vision through the eye, and its reason through 
the brain; as the rosebush exhibits its beauty and 
perfume through the rose; as the lighting system 
manifests its radiance and light through the little 
carbon filaments ; so the cooperative cosmic organ- 
ism displays its self-consciousness and reason, its 
self-discovery and self-knowledge, through the 
brain and mind of man, and others like him in 
other worlds or planets. 

And as it is the whole human organism that sees 
through the eye, and not the eye merely that sees 
for itself; and the whole human body that thinks 
through the brain, and not merely the brain that 
thinks for itself ; as it is the whole rosebush which 
displays its beauty and sheds its perfume on the 
air, and not merely the blossom itself; and as it 
is the whole lighting system which cooperatively 
and jointly displays its radiance, brilliance, and 
light upon the nightly scene, and not the little 
carbon filaments selected and delegated to immedi- 
ately perform this specific function; so it is the 



INTRODUCTION ix 

whole cooperative and indivisible cosmic organism 
which is conscious and self-conscious, — which 
thinks, and knows, and finds when man thinks, 
and knows, and finds, — and not merely that little 
cosmic organ called a man, which, so to speak, has 
been selected and delegated by nature, along with 
similar intelligences in other worlds, to immedi- 
ately perform that particular and most important 
function for the universe as a whole. 

Man is merely one of nature's brains and minds, 
and Nature thinks, and knows, and discovers her 
truths through these human brains and earthly 
minds of hers. As the eye is something more than 
itself, separately considered; as the brain, the 
flowers, and the lights, are something higher than 
themselves, regarded in isolation; so is man some- 
thing more and something higher than himself; 
something more and something higher than a little 
microscopic man. He is a genuine organ and 
function of the universe; an eye and soul of the 
world, a mind and heart of God. So when man 
finds and knows himself, when he truly orients 
and locates himself and gets his real bearings 
and place in the world, it really means and signi- 
fies this: that the Universe, or cosmic organism, 
or God, has found himself in his world of being 
as a whole. Thus God finds and knows himself 
in man and through man ; and thus man finds him- 
self in God and of God ; for man and God are not 
two separate beings, but are as the organ and 
organism, the function and being, the brain and 



x THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

body, of one indivisible and cooperative unit and 
whole. 

Is this monistic theory and organic conception 
of the universe and man the true one? Is this 
conception of the universe as a vast, varied, and 
genuine organism; of the solar system as a bona 
fide sub-organism, branch or limb of it; and of 
man as a true psychic organ and spiritual func- 
tion of the unitary whole, the true one? What is 
an organism? It is, essentially, a unitary system 
of interdependent parts and organs which divide 
their labors and functions, and cooperate in har- 
mony and mutual reciprocity, to realize the ends 
or results for which the whole unitary and indi- 
visible system exists. Is the universe an organ- 
ism according to this definition? I believe it 
certainly is. The solar system is certainly such 
a differentiated and cooperative system of parts 
and organs, the sun acting as a vast transmitting 
dynamo of living and conscious energies, the 
planets acting as receiving stations, and man, es- 
pecially, acting as the efflorescence and spiritual 
achievement of the whole cooperative activities 
and energies of the system, Man is the blossom 
and the solar system is the plant; and man blos- 
soms, not by himself or through himself or for 
himself, but as the representative and delegated 
function of the whole system. But the solar sys- 
tem itself is not the whole organism of being ; it 
is only a sub-system, sub-organism, or branch of 
the universe as a unitary whole ; and it must stand 



INTRODUCTION xi 

in some dependent or interdependent relation, be a 
differentiated and cooperative part and organ of 
the reciprocally related and mutually reacting 
system of the universe as a whole. 

That we do not know much about the universe 
as yet, nor the exact place and function of the 
solar system in the cosmic system, is true; but 
that the latter has some place and function is 
certain, and is already known in part. The solar 
system cannot be an independent and isolated 
body any more than man is, or the earth and other 
planets are. It must form a part of a larger 
and truer cooperative organism and whole of be- 
ing, — the universe, — the final, complete, and per- 
fect organism of all existence, the God of modern 
science and philosophy. The universe might be 
rudely likened to a vast and perfect cosmic plant, 
of which the solar systems were the branches, the 
planets were the branchlets, and the conscious 
intelligences like man were the flowers, the beauty, 
the color, and perfume — in fact, the efflorescence, 
end, and result of the vast, varied, and cooperative 
efforts of the cosmic organism as a unit and a 
whole. The flowers, eyes, and minds are never 
independent and separate things, representing 
and functioning for their little separate selves 
alone; they are delegated functions, which rep-= 
resent and function for the whole of which they 
are mere parts. They are differentiated, spe- 
cialized, and set apart, simply to perform their 
particular functions for the whole cooperative 



xii THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

body. It is here in the mind of man, — and other 
beings like him in other worlds, no doubt, — that 
the Cosmos comes to self-consciousness, self-dis- 
covery, self-knowledge and self-realization. It is 
here that a head, brain, and mind of the universe 
is located. Its consciousness is specialized, local- 
ized, and focalized in this particular planet and 
in these human forms. So when man thinks and 
knows, the universe thinks and knows, as in and 
through its human head and brain. Man does 
not think and function for himself alone ; he thinks 
and functions as the delegate and representative 
of the universe at large. He does not think 
through or by himself alone any more than the 
flower blossoms through and by itself alone. He 
thinks through the powers and labors of the whole 
infinite and eternal universe, as the flower blos- 
soms through the powers and efforts of the whole 
plant. Man is an efflorescence, here on this earth, 
of the vast cosmic plant ; he is an eye of the world 
and a mind of the universe. Man is something 
more and something higher than himself, some- 
thing vaster and something grander than a mere 
and little man. He is an organ, function, and 
representative of the infinite and eternal universe. 
He is an eye and soul of the universal world. He 
is the intelligence and heart of God here on this 
earth, at least, as other rational beings are, un- 
doubtedly, in other worlds and planets. 

If this universe is a genuine universe, then it 
must be a bona fide organism. If it is not a real 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

organism, then it must be a mere aggregation and 
totality, an inexplicable sum-total of innumerable 
independent and separate beings and things. 
Whether it is a real organic universe or only a 
duiverse, or pluriverse, or multiverse, we hope to 
show, more or less, in the following pages. This 
problem of the unity, duality, plurality, and 
multeity of the world of so-called beings and 
things involves the important and vital questions, 
to us, of the positive individuality of man and 
the immortality of the individual soul; and we 
hope to throw some little light upon these absorb- 
ing questions. There has been of late years a 
remarkable revival of interest in, and advocacy 
of, spiritism among a number of prominent scien- 
tific men. Now there is a fundamental and ir- 
reconcilable antagonism between a thoroughgoing 
monism and spiritism. If monism is true, then 
spiritism must be false, for spiritism is really 
pluralism and atomism and dualism, as regards 
the mind and body ; while if spiritism is true, then 
monism and a perfectly organic conception of 
the cosmos must be false. There is no possible 
compromise between a bona fide monism and spir- 
itist doctrines. One or the other must be repu- 
diated by all honest thinkers. Two such 
irreconcilable theories cannot logically be enter- 
tained by the same mind. No honest and 
thoroughgoing monist can believe in the plurality 
of really separate spirits, or in the duality of 
mind and body, either during life or after death. 



xiv THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

Nor can he believe in the immortality of abstract 
psychic states, which is just what spiritism im- 
plies. To him, the immortality of a bald abstrac- 
tion is nonsense and nothing less. In fact, he 
must deny the existence of any such abstraction 
as a pure soul, even during life. Monism dis- 
counts and discredits such theories, or assump- 
tions, at the very start. It has " nothing to 
arbitrate " with spiritism at all, and it can easily 
prove that the notions of spiritism have not a 
logical leg to stand upon. Monism must logically 
deny, not only the immortality of the entity called 
a pure spirit after death, but also the existence 
of any such entity before death and during life. 
For a pure spirit is a pure mental abstraction 
of the analyzing intellect, and has no existence at 
any time, either during life or after death. Spir- 
itism assumes a duality of soul and body and a 
plurality of separate and isolated spirits. Mon- 
ism necessarily denies both this duality, and this 
plurality. Spiritism also assumes the continu- 
ance after death of a pure spirit, chained and 
imprisoned in a purely material body during life. 
Monism denies the existence of any purely ma- 
terial bodies, or of any purely psychical spirits 
during life. Hence there cannot be any continu- 
ance after death of something that never existed 
during life, — viz., a purely abstract psychical 
spirit. 

" I look for ghosts, — but none will force 
Their way to me; 'tis falsely said 



INTRODUCTION xv 

That ever there was intercourse 
Between the living and the dead." 1 

THE ONE AND THE MANY. 

Modern science and philosophy are rapidly 
demonstrating to the minds of unprejudiced 
thinkers that there is but one real integer of being 
in existence in all this vast and varied universe. 
The scientists and philosophers of to-day are re- 
discovering, through the marvellous progress of 
modern science, that great and revolutionary 
truth which the sages of ancient India discovered 
thousands of years ago, and which they pro- 
claimed in that significant saying of the Vedanta 
scriptures : there is but " one Being without a 
second." The universe, therefore, if this be true, 
which I no longer doubt, has but one real inhabi- 
tant. The entire population of the universe is 
one. The highest and greatest number in exist- 
ence is the number one, which stands for, repre- 
sents, and symbolizes the one and only real integer 
of being in existence. All other, so-called, higher 
and larger numbers, like 2, 3, 4», etc., to infinity, 
are, in reality and truth, nothing whatever but 
lower, smaller, and inferior numbers which stand 
for, represent, and symbolize not any integers 
of being whatever, but merely the many in/numer- 
able fractions of being into which the one and 
only integer of being has superficially sub-divided, 
differentiated, and distinguished itself in the 

i Wordsworth. 



xvi THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

process of its formal or morphological evolution. 
According to the Hindu scriptures, Krishna said, 
" I am the One and I wish to be the many " ; and 
so, out of his original and formless unity, he 
evolved the formful and innumerable many. Yet 
never for an instant did he lose his native and 
original oneness. The number one is the only 
whole number, the only integral number, the only 
infinite number there is. All other numbers are 
partial, fractional, and finite numbers. One is 
the supreme and transcendent number; it is the 
number of all numbers; it is the sum-total and 
footing up of all other numbers; for all other 
numbers added together only make up a total of 
one. It is the mother-parent of all other num- 
bers ; for out of it all numbers originally came, 
and back into it all numbers will finally go. 2 It 
is the all-inclusive and all-comprehensive number 
because it includes and comprehends within itself 
all other numbers as fractions, fragments, and 
portions of itself. It is the unlimited and in- 
dependent number, for it is not limited by, or 
dependent upon, any other number. One is the 
sublime, divine, and Godlike number, for this num- 
ber, and this one alone, represents and symbolizes 
the sublimity, divinity, and deity of the world, — 
the transcendent Number One whom we call God, 
or the cosmic-social Organism and Intelligence of 
the world. 

2 This is the science and philosophy of number; as Pro- 
fessor Ladd says : " All numbers refer back to unity." 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

The motto of the cunning and selfish men of 
the world is : " Look out for number one" they 
taking it for granted that each and every human 
being is, in some real sense, an integer of being 
and a real number one. But the foregoing 
philosophy of numbers shows how ignorant and 
futile they are. No, we human beings are not 
" number ones," nor integers of being at all ; we 
are merely the infinitesimal fractions of being, the 
infinitesimal functions of the one and only integer 
of being there is. We are not " number ones," 
but only number one nUlionths 3 of the original 
and only Number One. And as these number 
one-nillionths, these infinitesimal fractions of the 
real Number One, our divine and cosmic duty and 
devotion, loyalty and love, should be given it as 
to our God, — the Cosmic-social Organism and 
Intelligence of the World. 

"E PLUBIBU8 UNUM." 

There is " one Being without a second " ; there 
is but one integer of being, but there are many 
innumerable fractions of being contained within 
this whole and completed one. Thus is solved 
the pretended difficulty of the problem of the One 
and the many. " E pluribus unum " is the 
organic principle of the universe as it is the politi- 
cal motto of the United States. The One is the 

3 The letter n is used as an algebraic symbol for the in- 
finite or indefinitely great or numerous. A nillionth in this 
sense would be an infinitesimal fraction. 



xviii THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

organic integer; the many are the organic frac- 
tions; the One is the cosmic organism of the 
world ; the many are the cosmic organs, struc- 
tures, and functions of the whole: the One is the 
superficially subdivided, differentiated, and dis- 
tinguished, but still profoundly united and in- 
tegrated organism of the world ; the many are the 
superficial subdivisions, differentiations, and 
distinguishable forms, parts, and organs of the 
still profoundly unitary whole : the One is the in- 
tegral, cosmic, and social individual and person 
of the world; the many are the innumerable 
individualized and personalized organs and 
functions of this worldrpersonality, and world- 
intelligence. The One is the whole cosmic mind, 
soul, and spirit; the many are the innumerable 
partial minds, souls, and spirits. The One is the 
cosmic integer of individuality and personality; 
the many are the cosmic fractions of individuality 
and personality. 

Because of the fact that the cosmic organism 
is not, and cannot be, a simple, undivided unit, 
but is, and must be, a complex and subdivided 
one, there arises the necessity for the social or- 
ganization of the world. Hence the system of 
cosmic life is, of necessity, an associated and 
social system ; and so the cosmic organism becomes 
an associated and social organism, and the cosmic 
organs and functions become associated and social 
organs. The individuality of the world becomes, 
of logical necessity, a complex, multiple, and 



INTRODUCTION xix 

multiform individuality, a social individuality, a 
society of individuals. The personality of the 
world becomes a complex, multiple, and multiform 
personality, a social personality, a society of per- 
sons ; and so the mind, soul, and spirit of the 
world becomes a complex, multiple, and multiform 
mind, soul, and spirit, a social mind, a social soul, 
and a social spirit; a society of minds, a society 
of souls, and a society of selves and spirits. 

" All are needed by each one, 
Nothing is fair or good alone." 4 

THE SUPREME NAME. 

By the word " God " we mean the supreme 
Being of the world; and this title, or name of 
God, is the supreme name which man can now 
bestow upon the supreme being of his conception. 
By religion we mean man's supreme belief in re- 
gard to this world; his supreme practice flowing 
from this belief, and the supreme emotions,— 
devotion, loyalty, love, and enthusiasm, — which 
this supreme belief inspires and calls forth. 5 The 
church, in the broadest possible sense of the word, 
is that supreme social institution which is de- 
voted to the preaching and practice of this belief 
and to its utmost realization in the life of man- 
kind. 

* Emerson. 

s Emotionally considered religion is a kind of cosmic 
patriotism; intellectually it is a cosmic philosophy; and 
morally it is a cosmic ethics. 



xx THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

THE SUPREME BEING. 

We have found that there is but one integral 
being and personality in the world; a being and 
a personality which includes within itself all other 
subordinate and partial beings and personalities. 
Hence this all-inclusive and comprehensive being 
of the world is, and must be, the supreme and 
transcendent being of the world. This supreme 
Being cannot remain nameless. This cosmic or- 
ganism, world-individual, and world-soul is fully 
entitled to the name of the supreme being, — 
" God." If this cosmic organism and world-in- 
telligence is not the supreme Being of the world, 
and is not the supreme Personality of the world, 
then there is and can be no supreme Being, and 
no supreme Personality at all. If this cosmic 
organism, this supreme Being, is not entitled to 
the name of " God," or is not worthy of it, then 
no being can be worthy of that supreme name, 
or be in any degree entitled to it. Either this 
being is God, or there is no God. But I believe 
that this cosmic organism of the world is God, 
and is fully worthy and entitled to bear that au- 
gust and transcendent name to which now, in the 
normal course of human history and religious 
evolution, it has become the historical heir and 
natural evolutionary successor. It has become 
the divine heir and successor to all the gods that 
have gone before, of all past ages and of all past 
and passing religions. The true and final God 



INTRODUCTION xxi 

of the world must be the supreme World-being 
itself and not some smaller or imaginary part of 
it ; it must be the great World-spirit, the spiritual 
fatherland and motherland of all conscious and 
rational beings. 

" There the Holy Essence rolls, 
One through separated souls." 6 

" The One remains, the many change and pass ; 
Heaven's light forever shines ; earth's shadows fly." 7 

THE SELF-DISCOVERY OF GOD. 

Man has discovered and rediscovered God, and 
he has further discovered that God is that su- 
preme cosmic and social organism of which he 
himself is a constituent part and a most significant 
organ and function. He is one of God's brains 
and minds, and through this human brain and 
mind, which is also and at the same time the brain 
and mind of God, he has discovered the true self 
and divinity of the world. God, as man and 
through man, has discovered himself and his own 
divinity ; God, as the human and earthly organ 
of his own intelligence, has discovered his whole 
true organism and his whole true self. Thus has 
God, — the whole, — found himself through man 
and in man, — the part ; and thus has man, — the 
part, — found himself in God and of God, — the 

6 Emerson. 

7 Shelley. 



xxii THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

whole. At last God knows himself, and knows 
himself as God and man. At last man knows 
himself, and knows himself as man and God. 
" Know thyself, and thou shalt know God." 8 
There is no other possible discovery but self-dis- 
covery, and no other possible knowledge but self- 
knowledge. All discovery is self -discovery, and 
all knowledge is self-knowledge, for it is the dis- 
covery and knowledge of being by its own very 
self, for all being, in the last analysis, is but one 
whole being, and it can discover and know no other 
being than itself because there is no other and 
second being besides itself. Intelligence is a light 
for the inner illumination of the one and only 
world of being, and it does not and cannot exist 
for the illumination of any outer or other world 
of being, for no such outer or other world of 
being exists. The light is all within, and it is 
the inner light of God's own world. The God 
that found himself is also man; and the man that 
found himself is also God. This fact of the ab- 
solute oneness of all being shows the utter fallacy 
of such a doctrine as that of the " unknowable " 
God. 

THE " SELF-KNOWABLE GOD." 
All being is one Being ; there is but " One with- 
out a second." Hence the knower and the known, 
the subject and the object, are really and truly 

s Ex-President Chas. W. Eliot says, in his lecture on 
"The Religion of the Future," that "the race has come 
to the knowledge of God through the knowledge of itself." 



INTRODUCTION xxiii 

one. All knowledge is self-knowledge, — the 
knowledge of being by itself and through itself; 
and in the monistic nature of things it cannot be 
anything else. Hence all human knowledge is also 
divine knowledge, for man's knowledge is also the 
knowledge of God as man. It is God's knowledge 
of himself. If God is unknowable, then it is to 
himself that he is unknowable, and not to some 
other and second being, for there is no other and 
second being either to know, or to be known. All 
the knowledge that man possesses is knowledge of 
this so-called, unknowable God, and it is, more- 
over, the knowledge of this unknowable God by 
the unknowable God himself. So that the doc- 
trine that God is unknowable amounts to the as- 
sertion that God cannot know himself; that the 
" One without a second " cannot know itself ; that 
the " One without another " is opaque as midnight 
to its own very self. 



" THE INNER LIGHT." 

If knowledge was necessarily and always the 
knowledge of one being by another, exterior, alien, 
and different being, then some good ground might 
exist for assuming that these other, exterior, and 
foreign beings or things could not be really and 
truly known to the knower and would be opaque 
to him. If knowledge, in other words, was like 
an outer light, — something external and exterior 
in function and character, something to illumi- 



xxiv THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

nate exteriorly the stubborn, opaque, and antag- 
onistic nature of external and foreign beings and 
things, then again it might be said that real and 
true knowledge was impossible. But such is not 
the nature of knowledge, for such is not the dual- 
istic and pluralistic constitution of the world of 
being and of knowing. 

. ..." To know, 

Rather consists in opening out a way, 
Whence the imprisoned splendor can escape; 
Than in effecting entry for a light, 
Supposed to be without." 9 

Knowledge, in the last analysis, is never the 
knowledge of one being by another and second 
being, but is always the knowledge of one integral 
being by its own true self and through its own 
true self, — the knowledge of the whole organism 
by the organ of knowledge and through the organ 
of knowledge, which here on earth is the mind of 
man, — and so man can say with perfect and lit- 
eral truth, 

" I am the Eye, with which the universe 
Beholds itself, and knows itself divine." 

Knowledge, therefore, is like an " inner light," 
an interior illumination; it is always, in the last 
analysis, an internal, interior, and native func- 
tion of both the knower and the known. It is a 
function for interior self-illumination and self- 

9 Browning. 



INTRODUCTION xxv 

enlightenment; and there is nothing whatever in 
the nature of the known that is alien, opaque, 
and hostile to the nature of the knower, for the 
knower and the known are one and the self-same, 
identical being. Hence there is no reason what- 
ever in the monistic constitution and nature of 
the being of the world why it should not be trans- 
parent and perfectly knowable to itself. God, 
therefore, is not the unknown and unknowable be- 
ing of the world, but he is, on the contrary, the 
self-knowing, self-knowable, and self-known. 
When man thinks, God thinks, and when man 
knows, God knows ; for man's intelligence is God's 
intelligence in its human and earthly form. For 
God and man are one as brain and body are one; 
as the partial cosmic organ and the whole cosmic 
organism are one; as the rose and rosebush are 
one; as the electric light and whole lighting sys- 
tem are one. 

" Far more than himself is the man we see, 
For a mind in the body of God is he." 

THE SELF-REALIZING BEING OF THE WORLE 

Self-realization is a supreme law of the uni- 
verse. Every particle of energy in the universe 
persistently strives to assert itself, and so to real- 
ize and manifest itself according to its inner na- 
ture and its outer form. Never for an instant 
does it cease to work, and so to realize itself; 
never for an instant does it idle, loaf, or shirk, 



xxvi THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

and so cease to realize itself in its real and inner- 
most nature. There is not an atom of idle energy 
in the universe; every bit of it is persistently at 
work. This is the meaning of the law of the con- 
servation of energy. 

The law of universal evolution expresses the 
method and outcome of the universal effort and 
struggle for self-manifestation and self-realiza- 
tion by the being of the world as a whole. Her- 
bert Spencer has based his theory of cosmic 
evolution upon the law of the " persistence of 
force," which really means the persistent self-as- 
sertion, self-realization and self-manifestation of 
all the energy and being in the world. Be the 
nature of universal being what it may (and as 
far as we can say, a-priori, it may be anything 
that is not illogical and inconsistent with itself), 
it undoubtedly realizes its real and intrinsic being 
to the innermost of its nature and the uttermost 
of its powers. Self-realization is a fundamental 
and supreme law of being, and the universal Be- 
ing, or God of the world, is a great self-asserting, 
self-realizing, and self-exploiting being. The 
God of Science is a self-exploiting and self-real- 
izing God who exploits, realizes, and manifests 
himself to the uppermost of his nature and the 
uttermost of his powers in the being, life, and 
consciousness of the world. He is a God of end- 
less effort and ceaseless creation, and not of eter- 
nal idleness, non-creation, and Sabbath-like 
leisure, rest, and ease. " My Father worketh 



INTRODUCTION xxvii 

hitherto, and I work," said Jesus; and the God 
of Science, like the God of Jesus, is the eternally 
working, creating, and self-realizing God of the 
persistently working, creating, and self-realizing 
man. For God and man are not two separate 
beings, but only one, as the whole and part, or 
the living being and its highest function, are one. 
Man is a representative part, organ, and func- 
tion of the universal whole, and the self-realizing 
law of God's universal life is also the self-realiz- 
ing law of man's. To be and exist means to do 
and become; and not only to do and become, but 
to do and become to the uttermost and uppermost 
of one's nature and powers. It means the maxi- 
mum and optimum of self-realization and self- 
idealization. It means to strive and strain and 
struggle to the limit of one's being. This uni- 
versal struggle for self-realization is unconscious 
in the inorganic world, subconscious in the vege- 
table and lower animals, and becomes conscious, 
more or less, in the highest. In man it becomes 
self-conscious, and through increasing knowledge 
and unceasing effort man begins at last to def- 
initely discover his perfect identity and unity 
with the one, only, and universal Being of the 
world, i. e., in a word, with God. Man in the 
process of evolutionary self-realization has 
reached the stage of a definite and divine self- 
discovery. He has discovered who and what he 
is, and who and what is God, partially at least. 
His ignorance, misapprehension and uncertainty 



xxviii THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

is giving way to a calm and clear conviction that 
he himself is a genuine part and a bona fide func- 
tion of the one, only and divine being of the 
world. At last, he is saying to himself : " That 
God for whom I have been searching all over the 
universe and outside the universe is all the time 
myself, — not my little, separate, and individual 
human self, but my great, all-inclusive, divine, 
and godlike self." Yes, truly he can say: 

" I am the eye with which the universe 
Beholds itself and knows itself divine." 

But the struggle for self-realization cannot end 
here. A higher stage of self-realization is pos- 
sible to man and must therefore be reached. 
Man not only needs to definitely discover himself, 
but he further needs to thoroughly know and 
perfectly understand himself and his own real 
world of being. He must seek self-knowledge and 
world-knowledge to the limit of his powers in order 
that he may reach a higher and truer stage of 
self-realization and world-realization. And when 
this stage of self-knowledge and world-knowledge 
has been attained, then his pathway will be clear 
to the greatest possible self-realization and the 
highest possible self-idealization, in achievement 
and experience, of which he and the world are 
capable. 

This, then, is the supreme law of the universe: 
u Thou shalt realize thyself to the uppermost of 
thy nature, and the uttermost of thy powers ; thou 



INTRODUCTION xxix 

shalt find thyself, in truth, in the world of stress 
and strain; thou shalt work out thy salvation in 
struggle and in strife." This is the law of God's 
life, and so it is of man's. Self-activity, self-dis- 
covery, self-knowledge, and self-realization, these 
are the steps and stages in the life of God and 
man. 

THE ILLUSION OF INDIVIDUALITY AND THE 
SUPERSTITION OF SELF. 

With these preliminary and introductory state- 
ments to show the general trend and purpose of 
this essay, we will now proceed to the more sys- 
tematic treatment of the real problem under dis- 
cussion, which is, mainly, that of the bona fide 
individuality of men and things in general, and 
especially of men, for that is the problem that 
primarily, and almost exclusively, interests us. 
We propose to analyze the so-called individuality 
of man in order to see whether it is a bona fide 
and profound reality or a superficial illusion, and 
whether the belief in man's human selfhood is a 
scientific conviction or a traditional supersti- 
tion. Incidentally, the treatment of this problem 
opens up a great many of the profoundest and 
most important questions in human life; and ac- 
cordingly as this question of individuality is an- 
swered for or against, there will result two 
diametrically opposite philosophies of life, with 
all that this implies. If the question of man's 
individuality is answered in the affirmative, then 



xxx THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

a pluralistic, and, also, a dualistic, philosophy, 
religion and ethics will ensue. If it is answered in 
the negative, then a thoroughly monistic philoso- 
phy, religion, and ethics will result. In either 
case a diametrically different attitude towards 
the world and life will follow, and hence the pro- 
found significance and importance of this ques- 
tion and the answers to it. 



CHAPTER I 
THE WORLD OF ILLUSION 

** Man lives plunged in a world of illusion and deceptive 
forms, which the vulgar take for reality." 

Democritus. 

The profound philosophers of ancient India de- 
clared for ages, with practically one voice, that 
our whole visible world was " Maya," or illusion. 
So Plato said we were like men chained in a cave, 
with their faces towards a wall and their backs 
towards a fire or the light ; and between this light 
or fire and themselves, men and animals passed, 
throwing their shadows upon the wall ; and it was 
these shadows, only, that these chained victims of 
illusion saw. Their only knowledge was of shad- 
ows, and so, he said, was ours. And this con- 
viction that the visible world is one of appear- 
ances rather than realities has been the general 
judgment of philosophers down to this day. 

There must be some profound truth in this be- 
lief, however it may need to be qualified or crit- 
ically understood. This world in which we live 
and move and have our being, and which also lives 
and moves and has its being in us, is, to us evolving 
mortals, to a vast, though hopefully diminishing 
extent, a world of sense illusions, deceptive appear- 



2 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

ances, and untrue inferences. Hence it has always 
been to mankind a world of ignorance and grossest 
superstitions, and the poet Moore was almost 
right when he said, " This world is all a fleeting 
show, for man's illusion given." I would rather, 
however, compare it to a great masquerade of the 
powers and realities of Nature, in which it was 
the function and purpose of man's developing 
mind to tear off and remove the masks and dis- 
guises by evolutionary degrees until, finally, the 
complete or satisfactory unmasking of the Being 
of the world had been accomplished and we should 
know things as they really and truly are. But a 
great many philosophers in the past have taken a 
pessimistic and hopeless view of man's cognitive 
powers and have declared, not only that we do 
not know, but, also, that we never can know the 
true and inner nature of " things in themselves " ; 
their epistemological creed is not only " igno- 
ramus/* but also " ignorabimus" — not only that 
we don't know, but also that we cannot know. 
They are, in this sense, " agnostics," and believers 
in the " unknowable." 

But the thinkers of the present time, under the 
influence of a strong monistic tendency in philoso- 
phy, are taking a distinctly hopeful and optimistic 
view of the problem of knowledge, and are declar- 
ing that man may or can finally, when he has at- 
tained the full maturity and perfection of his 
intellectual development and powers, know the real 
and essential nature of the things of this world. 



THE WORLD OF ILLUSION 8 

These might, in this epistemological sense, be 
called " gnostics," or believers in the knowable 
nature of reality. As for myself, I take a dis- 
tinctly optimistic view, and believe that somewhere, 
and at some time, in this real and natural world 
of ours, monistically constituted as it is, we shall 
know the real and essentially true nature of 
things, and not merely their exterior appearances. 
For as a thoroughgoing and unqualified monist I 
believe there is but one real Being, without a real 
second in the world ; that all consciousness, knowl- 
edge, and discovery, is the consciousness, knowl- 
edge, and discovery, of this one Being by its own 
true self and through its own true self; that, 
therefore, in the last analysis, it is all self -con- 
sciousness, self-knowledge, and self-discovery; and 
not the consciousness, knowledge, and discovery 
of some other, second, alien, hostile, and opaque 
being outside of us. 

If all being is really one being, one vast organ- 
ism, then there can be nothing in the natures of 
the knower and the known that is alien, opaque, 
and hostile to each other; therefore, I do not see 
why this one being of the world may not, some- 
time and somewhere, develop a knowledge of its 
own true and essential self. 

" Still we say as we go, 
Strange to think, by the way; 
Whatever there is to know, 
That, we shall know some day." x 

i Rossetti. 



4 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

From this monistic point of view, all ignorance 
is self-ignorance; and all failure to discover 
means the lack of self-discovery. But whatever 
may be the true nature of knowledge, and what- 
ever may be the future nature of man's knowledge 
of this world, it is unquestioned and unquestion- 
able that man's knowledge in the past was fear- 
fully and tragically illusory, and that it is 
immensely so even in this enlightened present. 
Mankind has always lived and is living, even to- 
day, to a vast extent, in a world of appearances, 
sense illusions, false inferences, and gross supersti- 
tions; and only by slow, painful, and laborious 
efforts, as science and philosophy have advanced, 
has he been gradually discovering something of 
the real nature of the world around him. And it 
is through modern science alone, almost, that this 
truer knowledge is being acquired, and this, un- 
doubtedly, is to a great extent the peculiar mis- 
sion and proper function of science — to 
disillusionize and disabuse the growing human 
mind, to dispel the delusions which afflict it, and 
to reveal, — slowly, it may be, but still surely, as 
the mental and social evolution of man goes on, — 
the real character and essential constitution of 
the world. As human evolution goes on, the 
world of immediate sense illusion is being surely 
displaced by a world of scientific knowledge and 
truer reality. There has been an evolution of 
knowledge, both as regards quantity, quality, and 
organization, that is certain. As our knowledge 



THE WORLD OF ILLUSION 5 

has grown greater in quantity, it has correspond- 
ingly grown higher and truer in quality. It has 
become more real and less illusory, more pene- 
trative and profound, and less shallow and super- 
ficial. 

Now let us, before going any further on this 
line, try to discover some good reason, if we can, 
why man's senses and superficial impressions, — 
his eyes, ears, and feelings in general, — deceive 
him as they certainly do, and render such false, 
or rather deceptive and inadequate, reports of the 
real nature of the things around him. One very 
good reason is this : man, as a living organism, is 
composed of a multitude of little living cells, and 
these m turn are composed of many organic mole- 
cules. The molecules, again, are constituted of 
thousands of atoms, and the atoms, in turn, of 
electrical corpuscles or ions, which are now as- 
sumed to be little vortices, — or whirlpools of elec- 
trical energy differentiated out of, and so 
distinguished from, the infinite ocean of the un- 
differentiated pristine ether, or basic and primal 
substance, or being of the world, — out of which 
all visible and invisible, perceptible and impercep- 
tible, things and beings come, from which they are 
all made, and back into which they are constantly 
going and flowing, merging and melting, as in 
" the melting pot, of the molding shop, of nature 
and of God." 

Now, man as a living organism is placed in an 
environment which is filled with other organisms 



6 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

and things, which, like himself, are of a highly 
compound and recompounded character. As 
Prof. R. K. Duncan says : " Every thing in the 
universe is a swarm of atoms, and every action in 
the universe is the action of one swarm of atoms 
upon another." Man, phenomenally considered, 
is not a simple analytic being, but a compound, 
complex, and synthetic being, — " a swarm of 
atoms," or ions, raised to the fourth power ; and 
all the beings and things in his material environ- 
ment to which he must adapt and adjust himself 
and his actions, which he must see, handle, strug- 
gle, and interact with in numberless ways, are, like 
himself, compound, synthetic beings and things 
also. Now, man's senses and intelligence have 
been developed in reactive response to the active 
demands of his environment that he, as a living, 
striving, and struggling organism, adapt himself 
to it or else die in the attempt or refusal to do so. 
Man, as a massive and compound being, must ad- 
just and adapt himself to other massive and com- 
pound beings and things. His eyes in their con- 
struction are massive and compound eyes, and so 
are all his other sense organs. He is, therefore, 
obliged to see things in the mass, in the large, in 
composite pictures; and to get collective impres- 
sions and synthetic perceptions of things instead 
of cellular, molecular, atomic, or ionic, and ana- 
lytic visions and views of things. And so he is 
also obliged to handle and adjust himself to these 
things in the large, collective, and massive ways. 



THE WORLD OF ILLUSION 7 

Man would have no ordinary, everyday use 
whatever for a pair of microscopic eyes which 
enabled him to see clearly and distinctly all the 
cells, molecules, atoms, and ions of which all bod- 
ies and beings are composed. Such microscopic 
sight would distract his attention and prevent 
him from seeing things collectively, as he must. 
He " could not see the woods for the trees," or 
the " swarms " for the " atoms " ; and it is the 
" woods " and the " swarms " as collective wholes 
that he needs almost wholly to see, and not the 
analytic constituents of which they are composed. 
Man needs to see his enemies, food, tools, and 
weapons, etc., not as swarms of ions, but as col- 
lective and compact bodies and wholes ; and so it 
naturally and necessarily happens that man's 
practical, everyday knowledge, developed as it has 
been for practical use and adjustment and not 
for mere theoretical truth, immediately at least, is 
wholly a knowledge of the collective impressions, 
composite pictures, and synthetic perceptions of 
things. Such knowledge, of course, is not and 
cannot be perfectly or theoretically true, even as 
regards the material, external, and objective char- 
acter and appearances of things, while as regards 
the spiritual, internal, and subjective nature and 
condition of things our senses, of course, are 
blind, and give us no direct knowledge at all. 
Our perceptual knowledge is only a sort of exter- 
nal and objective half-knowledge, and it is very 
incorrect even at that. It is very imperfect and 



8 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

illusory in character, and when men infer, — as 
originally and naively they must, — that things 
are actually what they seem to our practical but 
uncritical senses, they are wofully mistaken, and 
are being actually, though innocently, deceived by 
their mass-perceiving and merely objectifying 
senses. 

And so it is scientifically true that the world 
of the practical and uncritical senses is a world 
of appearances and the greatest illusions; and 
man, therefore, sadly needs to supplement and 
correct his sensual and perceptual knowledge by 
knowledge of the profoundest and truest character 
possible to be acquired by scientific, philosophic, 
and critical means. He needs to use and to de- 
velop every possible faculty of his mind and soul, 
so that he may, if possible, some day come into 
a true and adequate knowledge of the nature of 
being. In pursuance of this need to truly know 
the real natures of things instead of their super- 
ficial appearances, science has invented and de- 
vised a multitude of wonderful instruments like 
the microscope, telescope, spectroscope, etc., and 
philosophy has formulated the laws of reasoning, 
studied the laws of knowing, and in the future, 
in cooperation with science, will strain every men- 
tal faculty and use every resource of the human 
mind in order to discover, if possible, and as far 
as possible, the real and essential nature of the 
being of the world. 

And so the disillusioning of man's mind goes 



THE WORLD OF ILLUSION 9 

gradually on, and so the evolution of real knowl- 
edge slowly but surely proceeds. Great and won- 
derful progress has already been made, in spite, 
too, of the bitter and tremendous opposition of 
superstitious and supernatural religions, and of 
selfish, class-ridden, and reactionary governments 
whose blind, brutal, and selfish interest it is or 
seems to be to keep mankind in darkness, igno- 
rance, delusion, and superstition. When once 
the slavery of the human mind has been abolished 
and it becomes free as it never has been, for £,000 
years, at least, and a truly free society of human 
minds has been realized, and millions and billions 
of intelligences the world over have attacked the 
mysteries and appearances of nature in a passion- 
ate and untiring effort to discover and to know 
the truth, I, for one at least, as a thoroughgoing 
monist who is convinced that all discovery and 
knowledge is self-discovery and self-knowledge, 
believe that Nature will disclose her secrets, and 
that man will know the essential truth at last. 
The masquerade of Nature will then be over, and 
the complete unmasking will have been achieved. 
Then man, as the brain and mind of God here on 
this earth, shall have found and known himself. 

THE SERIOUS AND TRAGIC NATURE OF 
ILLUSION. 

Now this ignorance, illusion, and superstition 
of the human mind is no trivial and unimportant 
matter, but, on the contrary, it is of the pro- 



10 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

foundest and even tragical importance as we can 
see by reading the past history of the race. I 
believe, in fact, that practically all of the trag- 
edy, horror, and shame in human life, both past 
and present, is due to this satanic cause, and that 
the complete and thorough destruction of igno- 
rance, illusion, and superstition will mean the re- 
alization of the " Golden Age " when God, as 
man, shall come into his own. Many of the minor 
illusions of human life have been dispelled, and 
as a consequence many of the minor tragedies 
have passed into history; but the supreme and 
transcendent illusion, the most diabolical and hell- 
ish superstition, still flourishes in full force, and 
to it is due practically all of the devilish sins and 
hellish horrors of the world. 

To what agency are due all the sins and crimes, 
all the miseries and sufferings, of mankind? 
Practically to one, viz., human selfishness. At 
the bottom of every sin and crime, of every pang 
and agony of mankind, of every foul and ugly 
blot on the fair face of the world, will be found, 
in the last analysis, that individual selfishness 
which separates a man from the life and joy and 
beauty of his fellows and shuts him up and off in 
his little cell of self which is to him a little " holy 
of holies," the sacrosanct tabernacle of his ego. 
Can any one doubt that selfishness is the root- 
cause of practically every sin and misery and 
ugliness in human life, and that if selfishness 
could be utterly and completely destroyed as Je- 



THE WORLD OF ILLUSION 11 

sus hoped to destroy it, the kingdom of heaven 
would come on earth as he declared it would? 
And can selfishness be destroyed, — not diminished, 
I mean, but destroyed completely, root and 
branch? And if it can be destroyed, how can it 
be done? By cultivating sympathy and love for 
others? By developing altruistic sentiments? 
No! Sympathy, love, and altruism will diminish 
selfishness, but they do not touch the roots of 
selfishness and will never tear them out of the soil 
in which they are fastened and anchored. This 
cure and remedy for selfishness is not radical, but 
merely skims the surface, for it assumes the real- 
ity and permanence of that which is the very 
spring and fountain of the emotions and senti- 
ments of selfishness: viz., the separate and indi- 
vidual self itself. If the individual self itself is 
an ultimate and basic reality which has, of neces- 
sity, a permanent and even an immortal existence 
at the very core and heart of every human being's 
life, then, of necessity, the central, core-like and 
heartfelt sentiments, emotions, and loyalties will 
be, and ought to be, selfish, egoistic, private, and 
exclusive. The innermost love and loyalty will 
be given, as it ought to be given, to this innermost 
core and heart of every human being, — the ego 
of the individual and private self. And the only 
love and sympathy which can be given, or ought, 
in loyalty to the ego, to be given, will be that 
which can in surplusage overflow and radiate from 
out of the overfilled precincts of the ego and the 



12 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

self. Love and loyalty must begin at home, in 
the home and the heart of the private ego, and 
from thence spread outward if there is any over- 
flow to spread. No! The love, sympathy, and 
altruism which leaves the private and inner ego 
intact, as a unique, individual, and monadic thing, 
essentially separate and isolated in its inner 
shrine and tabernacle and holy of holies, will 
never completely and utterly destroy selfishness 
as it ought to be destroyed. No 1 Selfishness 
will never be destroyed in this indirect way, and 
by attacking it from the outside or the rear. The 
best that can be done in this way will be to dimin- 
ish it. 

There is only one possible way of destroying 
selfishness, and that is, so to speak, by destroying 
the self itself. And the only possible way of de- 
stroying the self, so to speak, is to completely dis- 
prove the existence of the self, to show that it is 
a blind illusion and a superstitious dream, and in 
this way to completely destroy the belief in the 
self. And when the existence of the private and 
exclusive self has been completely and perfectly 
disproven and the belief in its existence has been 
completely and thoroughly eradicated from the 
human mind, then, and not till then, will it be 
possible to banish selfishness from the world. 
When men no longer imagine they have a private 
self, then they will no longer act selfishly, and the 
sins and sufferings of the world will cease. And 
then will be, — 



THE WORLD OF ILLUSION 18 

" Every tiger madness muzzled ; 
Every serpent passion killed; 
Every grim ravine a garden; 
Every blazing desert tilled." 

Men once imagined that the earth was as flat 
as a table ; science proved that it was as round as 
an orange. They thought it was perfectly mo- 
tionless; science proved that it spun around like 
a top, and swung around the sun at the rate of 
67,000 miles an hour. They thought the sun was 
a little body, several acres in area, that circled 
round the great big earth; but science proved 
that it was a million times larger than the earth, 
and that it was the earth which circled round the 
sun, once in every year. In these cases, which 
are typical, and in many others also, science dis- 
pelled the illusions of man's uneducated and 
uncritical mind and senses; and not merely cor- 
rected, but practically and diametrically contra- 
dicted, the notions and inferences of his mind. 
The reality was the very reverse of what man's 
uninstructed and uncritical mind and senses 
seemed to tell him. And what was true in these 
typical instances will be equally true in other in- 
stances to occur in the future, and will be espe- 
cially true in regard to man's notions concerning 
his own individuality, personality, and private 
selfhood. Science and philosophy will not merely 
correct and qualify his past and present ideas 
concerning his " self," but it will in this case, as 
in the others before mentioned, fairly and squarely 



14 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

contradict them and " give them the lie in the 
teeth." It will prove, and just as certainly, that 
man has no private, individual, personal, and per- 
manent ego, any more than the earth is flat, mo- 
tionless, and the center of the solar system; and 
when it does, then the egocentric notion of self- 
hood will be relegated to the museum of exploded 
illusions with the Ptolemaic astronomy of other 
days, and the cosmocentric theory will take its 
place. The past and present idea of the ego may 
fitly be called the Ptolemaic or egocentric theory 
of the self. And science will prove in this case to 
be another Copernicus, viz., of the self or soul, 
and will place the center of the spiritual universe 
out there, in the universal all and whole, instead 
of in here, in the microscopic, infinitesimal, and 
ever-flowing part. It will destroy man's selfish- 
ness by destroying his belief in his little micro- 
scopic self. But in return and compensation it 
will give him instead his great, infinite, eternal, 
divine, and Godlike self, and his democratic par- 
ticipation in the common divinity of the world. 

The earth appears to be flat and motionless and 
the center of the universe, but it is just the very 
reverse. So it appears to us as though we had 
permanent, private, and personal egos or souls; 
but we have nothing whatever of the kind; what 
we actually have is the very reverse of this; not 
for one single second of our lives have we a pri- 
vate, personal ego of our own, any more than the 
flame of a lamp, or the cataract of the river, or 



THE WORLD OF ILLUSION 15 

the waves of the ocean, have permanent and pri- 
vate egos and selves of their own. 

Man has been the credulous victim and the 
tragical dupe of many a minor illusion which sci- 
ence has gradually dispelled. But he is not " out 
of the woods " yet, for the greatest of all his 
illusions still remains to be dispelled. 

Let us briefly recount a few of these minor illu- 
sions, in order to realize something of their 
importance and tragical character. Men once 
imagined that the bowels were the seat of mercy; 
the heart, the seat of courage; the spleen, the 
seat of envy; that the arteries were air vessels; 
and that the insane were possessed by devils. 
And these poor creatures were driven out into the 
open, beaten and maltreated ; and the only remedy 
they had for insanity was for the priest or witch- 
doctor to exorcise or drive the devils out of them 
by prayer, incantation, or physical abuse. As we 
read in the New Testament, Jesus commanded the 
devils to leave certain men who were possessed, 
and the devils left them, and entered the bodies 
of a herd of swine, who forthwith became pos- 
sessed and rushed headlong over a cliff into the 
sea and were drowned. Man's soul they imagined 
was a breath which could be heard to depart and 
escape with the last gasps of the dying. So in 
epilepsy, hysteria, and, in fact, in all diseases, it 
was supposed to be caused by the activities of 
evil spirits and demons, working their malicious 
intents and diabolical purposes upon the body. 



16 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

And so the cure for disease was supposed to be 
through magic and exorcism instead of through 
therapeutics or natural agencies. Men imagined 
the circumambient air to be peopled with multi- 
tudes of ghosts and devils. When men were in 
good health, they said they were in good spirits, 
and vice versa; meaning, in fact, that the good 
and bad spirits were inside them. The fathers 
of the mediaeval Church described demons as in- 
flicting diseases upon men, and the 72nd canon 
of the Church forbade the casting out of devils 
by unauthorized persons without a special license 
from the Church itself. In harmony with these 
illusions and superstitions there arose the fearful 
and tragic belief in witches and witchcraft. This 
belief was practically universal throughout Eu- 
rope for centuries, and carefully compiled statis- 
tics and records show that nine millions of poor 
old women were burned and tortured to death for 
this imaginary and superstitious crime. 

Going somewhat further back in time, or rather 
in the stage and degree of human development, 
we find that among many savage, barbarous, or 
semi-civilized races, like the Mexicans, Peruvians, 
and Central Americans at the time of the Spanish 
Conquest, there existed among them a belief that 
death was not due to natural causes, but to the 
workings of malicious spirits and ghosts. They 
also believed that every man had a sort of spirit- 
ual double, or ghostly duplicate, which left the 
body at death and went away to some other coun- 



THE WORLD OF ILLUSION 17 

try, beyond the mountains or the horizon, and 
there resumed his earthly life much as he had 
lived it here, only, as a rule, much better. And 
in that far off country beyond the mountains, seas, 
or horizon, the dead man would need all the wives 
and women, human and brute companions, he had 
here, together with his material possessions. 
And so there arose, in harmony with these beliefs, 
in many countries, and all over this primitive 
world nearly, the fearful and tragic custom of 
immolating the wives and women of the dead man, 
also his servants and slaves, — or his horses, dogs, 
and weapons, as among the North American In- 
dians. For he would need and desire all these, 
they thought, in that other country to which he 
had departed at death. In India, in the custom 
of the " suttee," the widow jumped into the fu- 
neral fire and was burned alive with her husband's 
corpse. In Africa, among the Zulus, Dahomans, 
and Coast Negroes, the wives of the dead man, or 
chief, killed each other so as to accompany him 
to the other world. In Mexico at the time of the 
Spanish Conquest, when a king, chief, or noble 
was dying and before he was actually dead, his 
attendants, servants, and slaves would kill them- 
selves beforehand so that they could travel on 
ahead of him and make the necessary prepara- 
tions for his proper and comfortable reception 
in the other world. It is said that the number 
so immolated sometimes amounted to several hun- 
dred. In Peru at the same period a similar cus- 



18 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

torn existed, and it is recorded that when an Inca 
died, " his attendants and favorite concubines, 
amounting sometimes to thousands, were immo- 
lated on his tomb." In Dahomey, in Africa, on 
one occasion, " 285 of the wives and women of 
the dead king's household killed themselves." 

Now these are only a few instances among thou- 
sands of a like nature, showing what fearful and 
tragical illusions and superstitions have afflicted 
the human mind and cursed human life as during 
its evolution it has slowly, painfully, and with 
groping and stumbling steps struggled its way 
upward into the clearer and brighter light of the 
present day. During his evolution man's mind 
has developed its powers of mental vision so as 
to be able to see and penetrate deeper and further, 
beyond and behind, the material-seeming masks 
and appearances which the realities of the world 
wear to the inadequate and partial visions of the 
bodily senses. 

This partial and slight review of the toilsome 
and tragic path of the evolving mind as it has 
struggled upward from the blindness of the brute 
to the imperfect vision of to-day, suggests the 
question: Have we reached the end and the last 
of these illusions? Have we banished and de- 
stroyed them all? Are we completely " out of 
the woods " ? Is the world, and are we and our 
fellows, just what they seem to be and what we 
now believe they are? As we peer backward into 
the past history of humanity, we can plainly see 



THE WORLD OF ILLUSION 19 

to-day that many, perhaps almost all, of the 
greatest horrors and tragedies of human life were 
due almost entirely to human ignorance and illu- 
sions. Now, this old and groaning world of ours 
is still a world of tragedies. There are the trage- 
dies of war between nations and races; the curse 
of social conflicts between social and economic 
classes, between the inheriting and privileged rich 
and the disinherited and unprivileged poor; the 
poverty and degradation of the vast masses of man- 
kind; the crime, drunkenness, prostitution, and 
disease; the selfishness, greed, hatred, anger, and 
contempt, which is almost universal; the personal 
illwill, malice, envy, quarrels, and murders, we 
meet with almost everywhere. Is all this tragedy, 
horror, and misery normal, natural, and to be for- 
ever permanent and incurable? Does man act in 
this way and produce these fearful results in his 
life and conduct, knowing and seeing clearly and 
exactly just what the real nature of this world 
is, what his own true nature is, and what is the 
true relationship between himself and his fellow- 
men? Or are the tragedies and sins of this age 
and civilization, like many of the minor tragedies 
of the past which have now been ended, due en- 
tirely or essentially to some blind belief, some 
fearful illusion, which has always possessed and 
still possesses the human mind and so curses hu- 
man life, poisons the cup of enjoyment, and de- 
stroys the beauty of the world. 

I believe most sincerely that it is the last. I 



20 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

believe that the man of to-day, with a few rare 
exceptions, is as surely blind and superstitious, 
and has just as surely a tremendous illusion con- 
cerning one thing at least, — and that, too, the 
most central and important of all things to him 
and to his fellows, viz., his own selfhood, individu- 
ality, and personality, — as ever his barbarous 
and less enlightened ancestors had concerning this, 
as well as many other things. And I am further 
convinced that to this illusion of private selfhood 
is due practically all of the selfishness, sin, and 
misery of the world to-day, and that if this illu- 
sion of individuality and superstition of self could 
only be thoroughly and scientifically destroyed 
and banished, the undying hope in a happier, bet- 
ter, and more beautiful world which has haunted 
the mind and heart of man from the beginning 
until now, would be fully and perfectly realized. 
The only thing that stands between mankind 
and comparative heaven on earth is this one su- 
preme and transcendent illusion of the self which 
it is the glorious function and mission of science 
and philosophy to forever dispel and de- 
stroy. 

That is the monstrous and vicious illusion which 
stands to-day, like a giant in the way, between 
man and the kingdom of heaven. That is the il- 
lusion which makes this world a hell upon earth, 
and always will, as long as it lasts. That is the 
superstition which makes this world a valley of 
tears and a journey through the wilderness; and 



THE WORLD OF ILLUSION 21 

never until it has been utterly destroyed will man 
ever enter the long " promised land." 

" Eager ye cling to shadows, dote on dreams ; 

A false self in the midst ye plant, and make 

A world around which seems 

Blind to the height beyond, deaf to the sound 

Of sweet airs breathed from far past Indra's sky; 

Dumb to the summons of the true life kept 

For him who puts the false life by. 

So grow the strifes and lusts which make earth's war, 

So grieve poor cheated hearts and flow salt tears; 

So wax the passions, envies, angers, hates; 

So years chase blood-stained years 

With wild red feet." 2 

For this illusion of the self is the fountain head 
and spring of all cold-blooded selfishness, envy, 
hate, and anger ; of all pride, vanity, conceit, and 
contempt for others ; of all beliefs in the superior- 
ity of one's self and the inferiority of others; of 
all injustice, greed, cruelty, and crime. In fact, 
it is the real arch-fiend, the very real Devil itself, 
whose blind malice has always made, and always 
will make as long as it lasts, this world into 
a veritable hell. " Man's inhumanity to man 
makes countless millions mourn," and the simple, 
scientific reason is because men have always im- 
agined that they were private, separate selves; 
that they lived private, separate lives; had pri- 
vate, separate experiences; and would have pri- 
vate, separate fates and destinies. And all of 

2 Edwin Arnold, " The Light of Asia." 



23 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

this was a vicious and downright illusion. Men 
are not private, separate beings; they do not, 
and never can live, private, separate lives, no mat- 
ter how much they may imagine they do ; and they 
have, thank heaven, no private, personal fates 
and destinies. They are not individuals at all, 
in any genuine, exact, and scientific sense of the 
word; they are like the flames of the lamps, the 
jets of burning gas, the cataracts in the rivers, 
and the waves of the sea. They are merely the 
ever-flowing kinetic phenomena, the dynamic dif- 
ferentials, of the one and only cosmic organism 
and Individual of the world, whose ethereal, elec- 
tric, material, and psychically conditioned ener- 
gies flow, and flow, and flow forever, through all 
the multitudinous and phenomenally individualized 
forms and portions of its being. Without stop- 
ping or resting anywhere, or in any particular 
form for any length of time, its substance, ener- 
gies, and being flow and stream and fly through 
all things ; and thus insure for an absolute cer- 
tainty that in the long run, the eternal and endless 
run of the universal life, all portions of its being 
shall have a common, cosmic experience, and a 
common, cosmic fate and destiny. Every por- 
tion of being that exists shall experience in the 
long run just as much of heaven and just as much 
of hell as every other. 

Men have always imagined themselves to be 
" static " individuals, spiritually, at least, if not 
materially. They imagine themselves to be sepa- 



THE WORLD OF ILLUSION 38 

rate selves, in some sort of soul- tight compart- 
ments of their own. But science and scientific 
philosophy is prepared to-day to destroy this 
egotistical and perhaps pleasing illusion, and to 
prove that they are nothing more or less than the 
transient, dynamic differentials of being as a uni- 
tary cosmic organism under phenomenally indi- 
vidualized and personalized forms that are nec- 
essarily temporary and transient in character. 

And there is as much difference between the 
fallacious idea of a static and persistent indi- 
vidual and the true idea of a kinetic, dynamic, 
and -flowing differential of being as there once was 
between the exploded idea of a flat, motionless 
and geocentric earth and the true idea of the 
round, rotating, revolving and heliocentric earth 
of to-day. 

And as the illusion of a flat, motionless, and 
geocentric earth has now been destroyed by sci- 
ence, and the truth of the round, rotating, re- 
volving and heliocentric earth has taken its 
abandoned place, so we can be certain that before 
many years or generations have passed, the ca- 
lamitous illusion of the static and persistent hu- 
man ego, or self, will be dispelled and destroyed, 
and the truth of the dynamic human differential 
of being will have taken its deserted place. 

Every fresh discovery of science only goes to 
prove that the statical and pluralistic conceptions 
of things are false and illusory, and that the 
kinetic, dynamic, and monistic conception of be- 



24 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

ings and things is right. And so it is in this case 
concerning the nature and constitution of man 
and his relations to his fellows and the rest of 
the world. The statical, persistent, and plural- 
istic conception of man as a separate, exclusive, 
and private individual is unscientific, illusory, and 
superstitious ; while the kinetic, dynamic, and 
monistic conception of him as an ever-flowing por- 
tion of an ever-flowing whole of being is scientific, 
philosophic, reasonable, and true. The selfish- 
ness of mankind, with all the sins and sufferings 
it necessarily entails, can never be destroyed until 
the existence of the static self has been completely 
disproven and the belief in its existence has been 
completely destroyed. And the crass and cor- 
rupting individualism of society can never be de- 
stroyed until the existence of the exclusive and 
private individual has been thoroughly disproven 
and the belief in its existence has been torn out 
by the roots. But when, at last, this belief in the 
private self has been utterly and scientifically 
eradicated, then the blighting and accursed selfish- 
ness of human life and conduct and the crass and 
Corrupting individualism of society will have re- 
ceived the final and fatal deathblow, and a revolu- 
tion will have been accomplished in the moral and 
spiritual life of mankind. 

Man's last, greatest, and deadliest enemy on 
this earth is himself. Man has conquered the 
earth and the brutish creatures of the earth, and 
the only enemy he has left to conquer is his own 



THE WORLD OF ILLUSION 25 

blind, deluded, and self-divided self. Man is the 
supreme arch-enemy of himself, and all the sins, 
sufferings, and horrors of this world to-day are 
almost entirely those which are inflicted upon hu- 
manity by its own blind and deluded self. The 
sins of mankind are the sins of the blind; and the 
sufferings of mankind are all self-inflicted suffer- 
ings ; and the lashes and scourges which draw the 
tears, groans, and blood from the body and soul 
of man are all wielded by his own hands and laid 
upon his own back; and the poor, blind, deluded 
fool and wretch, in his blindness of sense and 
hardness of heart, always imagines (in his im- 
aginary privacy and selfishness) that he, pri- 
vately, is laying the lash upon some other private 
fellow's back. But, thank heaven, he is utterly 
and absolutely wrong in his imagination and illu- 
sion, for there is, in the last analysis, but " one 
Being without a second " ; and the substance and 
spirit of that one and only Being is flowing, and 
flowing, and flowing eternally and without rest, 
through every form and shape of human and all 
other life. Like the flame, the river, the cataract, 
the wave, and the electric current, it passes 
through all things and remains not an instant in 
one. In the last analysis there is no other and 
second being, no other and second fellow, upon 
whose devoted back any lash can be laid or any 
selfish, envious, angry, hateful, or malicious blow 
can be struck. 

The plurality and staticality of beings, like the 



26 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

duality of mind and body, is an utter phenomenal 
illusion and a deception of the shallow, superficial 
senses, impressions, and perceptions of the unsci- 
entific and uncritical man. Every blow that is 
struck in this world, thank God, is a veritable 
boomerang, which with a perfect and divine justice 
and retribution flies back and strikes the striker. 
For there is but one Being to strike, and one Be- 
ing, and the same, to be struck; and that Being 
flows forever through all its own parts. The one 
and ever-flowing Being can strike no one but itself. 
This is the perfect and divine justice of the world 
as it really and truly is, and not as it seems to be 
to our purblind, shallow, and separating senses. 

Man's supreme and final enemy is his own 
" self," and the final cause of this enmity and war 
of man upon himself is that selfishness which has 
its final and fruitful spring in man's blind belief 
and ignorant superstition that men have separate, 
private souls and are exclusive individuals. But 
no such souls or individuals exist except in his 
own benighted imagination. It is all an illusion 
and superstition, the supreme and most tragical 
illusion of human life; and this illusion of the 
private self, this superstition of the private per- 
son, must be utterly and ruthlessly destroyed be- 
fore selfishness and all the sins, crimes, sufferings, 
and ugliness which flow from selfishness can be 
banished from the earth, and a heaven of human 
harmony and joy and beauty can be realized. 

If men were genuine, private selves, they would 



THE WORLD OF ILLUSION 27 

have a perfect right and a loyal duty to be selfish. 
But ethics has always proclaimed with an insist- 
ent, persistent, and unwavering voice that men 
have no right to be selfish, private, and exclusive 
in their lives and conduct. If men have no moral 
and genuine right to be selfish, then, in the last 
analysis, the only possible reason can be that they 
are not in actual fact, and in the last resort, 
genuine statical selves at all, but are only seeming, 
dynamical, and phenomenal selves ; and this is the 
actual truth, and the profound and significant 
conclusion to which modern science and philoso- 
phy are pointing to-day with an unerring and un- 
wavering finger. Love is a delusion, ethics is 
founded on a falsehood, and the imperative moral 
law is a positive lie, unless as a final fact and 
ultimate truth all being is really one, and only 
one. 

There does not exist to-day the slightest scien- 
tific warrant or a single scrap of reliable scientific 
evidence for the belief in the existence of any sepa- 
rate selves whatever. Neither with the microscope, 
or telescope, or the ordinary senses, or in any other 
way whatever, has science yet discovered an indi- 
vidual being or thing, or anything suggesting one. 
The Daltonian atom once upon a time looked 
like an individual thing, but that, too, has given 
up its individual ghost, and has been resolved into 
the electrical vortices of the pristine and universal 
ether. 

The separate individuality of every material 



28 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

thing and phenomenon has now been thoroughly 
disproven. Every material thing that exists is 
now proven to be, in the last analysis, a dynamic 
differential of the pristine and common ether, or 
of the one and only ultimate substance and being 
of the world. And with this complete, scientific 
disproof of all material individuality and privacy, 
there also follows, necessarily, the disproof of all 
spiritual individuality and privacy too. For con- 
sciousness, or mind, or soul, — whatever you wish 
to call it, — is not an " entity " at all, but only a 
" state " or psychic condition of things, and as 
such is a pure abstraction from concrete being; 
and if there are no material individuals, then 
there can be no spiritual individuals and no par- 
tial, concrete individuals either. There remains 
but one supreme, all-inclusive individual, the cos- 
mic and social organism of the world ; the God of 
modern science and philosophy, in whose divinity 
every being democratically participates and 
equally shares. There is but one integral indi- 
vidual, person, and self in existence. There is 
but one inhabitant of the universe, the cosmic-so- 
cial organism of the world, which science calls 
" nature," which philosophy calls the " infinite 
and eternal reality," and which a scientific phi- 
losophic religion can now, with historical and evo- 
lutionary truth, call by the supreme and trans^ 
cendent name of " God." And of this cosmic-so- 
cial organism of the world, all men and creatures 
and things are the ever-flowing, ever-changing dif- 



THE WORLD OF ILLUSION £9 

ferentiations, the phenomenal and transient mani- 
festations and appearances, and the organic parts 
and members. 

Science and philosophy have never yet discov- 
ered a truly individual being or thing excepting 
the individual cosmic organism itself. That is the 
one and only true and integral individual that it 
does discover or can conceive. But what it does 
discover within the body of this universal and in- 
tegral individual of the world, and the only things 
it does discover, are the differential things, be- 
ings, and persons which are the organic parts and 
members of the indivisible cosmic organism. Sci- 
ence discovers nothing but the dynamic differen- 
tials of the cosmos as an organic, unitary, and 
individual whole, and dynamic differentials are the 
very antipodes of the static and private individ- 
uals of the ignorant human imagination. A 
dynamic differential is, of necessity, an organic 
part and member and an ever-flowing portion of 
an ever-flowing whole, like an ever-flowing cata- 
ract of an ever-flowing stream ; and it never loses 
its organic connection and fusion with the organic 
whole of which it is a fraction and a part. 

An individual thing or being, on the other hand, 
would necessarily be a bona fide, complete, and in- 
dependent whole, or organism in itself and by 
itself; and any thing or being which is not in 
some genuine sense a complete, perfect, intact, 
and independent whole in itself, is no true indi- 
vidual at all. And of such an individual thing as 



30 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

that, there is but one specimen in existence, viz., 
the universe itself. 

In every department of science and philosophy 
to-day kinetic, dynamic, and monistic conceptions 
are taking the place of the old statical, pluralistic, 
and dualistic ones ; and they are doing this in re- 
gard to the nature and constitution of man as well 
as in regard to everything else. The kinetic con- 
ception of man and his consciousness, will before 
long supersede completely the old, pluralistic, and 
statical one; and when it does, a revolution will 
follow in human thought, human conduct, and hu- 
man life. 

" All forms that perish, other forms supply ; 
By turns we catch the vital breath, and die; 
Like bubbles on the sea of matter borne, 
They rise, and break, and to that sea return. 
Nothing is foreign; parts relate to Whole; 
One all-extending, all-preserving soul 
Connects each being, greatest with the least; 
Made beast in aid of man, and man of beast; 
All served and serving; nothing stands alone; 
The chain holds on, and where it ends unknown." 8 



s Pope. 



CHAPTER II 

THE EVOLUTION OF THE MANY OUT OF 
THE ONE 

According to the Hindu scriptures, Krishna, 
the Indian God, said, " I am the One and I wish 
to be the many " ; and in another place it says ; 
" I am one, but by my power I appear to be 
many." These are only poetical and religious ex- 
pressions of the " law of cosmic evolution " as 
discovered and expounded by Herbert Spencer, 
and of the relationship between the Infinite and 
Eternal Energy (or Being) from which all things 
proceed, and the innumerable phenomenal and 
finite things which evolve out of it. The process 
of cosmic or solar evolution, as Herbert Spencer 
has argued and shown, consists in the passage of 
an original ocean of undifferentiated, undistin- 
guished, formless, and nebulous ether, or primal 
substance and being of the world, by evolutionary 
steps and stages, to a form of being which con- 
sists of a multitude of phenomenal parts and 
forms which are highly differentiated and distin- 
guished from each other and which, to our shallow, 
penetrating senses, seem to be separate and ab- 
solutely individual in character. The one ocean 

31 



32 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

of ether or being thus becomes, through the dif- 
ferentiating process of its morphological or 
formal evolution, a cosmos of many highly differ- 
entiated parts and forms. 

The One, by way of the process of cosmic differ- 
entiation and morphological transformation, thus 
realizes its wish and will to be the many ; and thus 
by its power of evolving and subdividing it ap- 
pears, to our short-sighted senses, as many in one 
great totalizing universe. Some one (Herbert 
Spencer, I believe) has said, that " evolution is a 
tendency to individuation," but this is distinctly 
untrue, if by individuation is meant absolutely 
separate and independent existence. 

Evolution is not a process of individuation at 
all, in the accurate and logical meaning of the 
word; it is instead a process of organic and sys- 
tematic differentiation. It is a differentiating 
and not an individuating process, and therefore 
the many products of evolution are not individual 
beings and things, in the strict and logical sense 
of the word, but merely differential beings and 
things who never for an instant lose their organic 
connection, dependence, and unity with the cosmic 
whole of which they are the self-differentiated and 
self-distinguished parts. The individuation is 
only comparative, not absolute; seeming, but not 
perfectly real. 

That is how, via evolution and subdivision, the 
One becomes the many, and that is the true rela- 
tionship between the One and the many; that is 



EVOLUTION OF THE MANY 33 

what the one means, — viz., the whole cosmic 
organism or system; and that is what the many 
means, viz., the numerous cosmic organs or sys- 
tematic parts. The One was absolutely one at 
the beginning of the evolutionary process and it 
still remains absolutely one throughout that proc- 
ess ; its unity is perfect and absolute at all times. 
It begins in a state of undifferentiated, or rather 
of least differentiated, oneness, and ends in a state 
of highly differentiated and most differentiated 
oneness ; but it never loses and can never lose its 
original and perfect unity. The theory of evolu- 
tion, therefore, is a perfect monistic theory ; it 
explains perfectly how the many come into being 
and appear to our superficial senses as individual 
beings and things. The one and only Being of 
the world is always, absolutely, and perfectly one. 
The many partial and fractional beings and things 
of the world are always only comparatively, phe- 
nomenally, and superficially many; they are never 
absolutely or really many except in this restricted, 
evolutionary, and qualified sense. The theory of 
evolution, therefore, completely discounts and dis- 
credits the existence of any positive plurality of 
beings and things whatever. 

" The One remains, the many change and pass ; 
Heaven's light forever shines, earth's shadow's fly." 

One great reason why things and beings appear 
to be many is because of the fact of our blindness 
to the lower, smaller, and less differentiated forms 



U THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

of matter and energy. If we could only see with 
our natural eyes the molecules, atoms, and ions 
and the pristine ether, then without a question 
we could see the perfect material oneness of all 
the things and persons in the universe, and the 
illusion of material multiplicity, except of differ- 
entials, would disappear. But these lowest forms 
of matter and energy are invisible to us, and 
hence those higher forms that are visible appear 
as absolutely separate and many, and seem to 
stand and move around in empty space ; but there 
is no empty space, there is only an empty or 
blind spot and space in our eyes and natural 
vision. The world appears, therefore, as a sort 
of " bas relief " in which some things are raised 
into prominence and view while others are de- 
pressed into an unseen background, and in this 
way the illusion of separateness and multiplicity 
arises, and the perfect, underlying unity is un- 
seen. The chain of beings and things is com- 
posed of links all joined perfectly together 
in one perfect whole; but while some of the 
links are visible, others are invisible, and 
hence the perfectly united chain, instead 
of looking like a chain to us, looks like a series 
of absolutely separate links. But science is 
gradually discovering these invisible and missing 
links in the unbroken and perfect chain of being, 
and is putting them into their proper places and 
connection; and as it does so, we are beginning 
to see more and more clearly and surely that there 



EVOLUTION OF THE MANY 85 

are no absolutely separate rings (or beings), that 
separation and individuality are blind illusions, 
and that the being of the world consists of one 
perfect and unbroken chain of existence. Life, 
instead of being a series of absolutely separate 
rings OOOOOOOOO (like this) is, in fact, a per- 
fectly unbroken chain and unit of being CBDGBBBBBB P 
(like this). 

The illusion of the many, the separate, and the 
individual, is thus rapidly being destroyed by sci- 
ence and scientific philosophy ; and before a great 
many years they will take their proper place with 
the exploded illusions of the flat earth and the 
circling sun; and the cosmocentric theory of the 
individual and the self will take the place of the 
past and present egocentric one. As our astro- 
nomical perspective and vision was once diamet- 
rically wrong, so our ontological and spiritual 
perspective and vision is still wrong (for the vast 
majority) ; and as science corrected and contra- 
dicted our astronomical perspective and vision, so 
it is now beginning to correct and contradict our 
ontological and spiritual perspective and vision; 
and as science substituted the heliocentric theory 
for the geocentric one, so it is beginning to sub- 
stitute the cosmocentric theory of the individual 
and the self for the egocentric theory of the same. 



CHAPTER III 
THE UNIFYING TENDENCY OF SCIENCE 

The whole tendency and effort of modern sci- 
ence is a monistic and unifying one ; it is a tend- 
ency and effort that is rapidly succeeding in 
proving the unbroken oneness and perfect internal 
unity of the entire all-inclusive being of the world, 
although it is true, of course, that this world is 
manifested to us in a multitude of infinitely vari- 
ous and seemingly separate and individual forms. 
The universe is a perfect organic unity (and hence 
a perfect organism) in an infinite variety of 
organic parts. It is not a mere pluralistic total- 
ity or aggregation of many separate beings and 
things ; it is not a mere external union, nor a mere 
organization ; but it is instead an integrality, or 
perfect whole, — a perfect internal unity, and an 
indivisible organism of being. 

The discovery of the law of gravitation by Sir 
Isaac Newton, of the heliocentric astronomy by 
Copernicus, of the laws of cosmic, solar, and bio- 
logical evolution by Spencer and Darwin, and many 
other discoveries by other men of science, all went 
to prove the perfect internal unity of the world 

and to show that it was in reality a true universe 

36 



TENDENCY OF SCIENCE 37 

and not a duiverse, pluriverse or multiverse of any 
kind. And so it was named a universe, and the 
name fitted the fact, and it has never been seri- 
ously challenged since, even by so-called pluralists. 
Thus, even Prof. James says his pluralistic world 
is a real universe, partly, if not perfectly, con- 
nected into a unitary whole. " Our ' multiverse ' 
still makes a ' universe,' " he says. 1 The whole 
tendency of science from the very beginning has 
been to discover and to demonstrate the perfect 
internal unities, continuities, and interconnexions 
of things in place of their seeming and superficial 
disunities, disconnexions and discontinuities; and 
so persistent and unfailing has this tendency been, 
and so far has this process of unification now gone, 
that no honest, logical, and capable mind can now 
for a moment doubt what the necessary and final 
outcome of science will be. 

Within the last few years a clinching and sig- 
nificant discovery has been made by chemical and 
physical scientists. It is that of the corpuscular, 
electrical, and ethereal constitution of all matter 
and energy. Up to within a few years ago it 
had seemed as though there were about 80 or 
more ultimate and basic chemical elements and 
atoms of matter, for it had been impossible, here- 
tofore, to break up and analyze these 80 differ- 
ent atoms into smaller and more simple elements. 
The world, so far as science could prove, seemed 
to be made out of 80 different kinds of funda- 
i"The Pluralistic Universe," Prof. Wm. James. 



38 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

mental matter, and that was a very pluralistic 
situation indeed. Logical and philosophical 
thinkers, however, had long ago believed that 
there must be, in the last analysis, but one kind 
of matter and but one body of matter, or, in 
other words, but one kind of being and but one 
body of being. In other words still, they believed 
that there was but one kind of being and but one 
being of the kind; that the universe, in fact, was 
a Unibeing; that the Cosmos as a whole had but 
one real inhabitant ; that there was but one family 
and genus of being, but one species of that genus, 
and but one specimen of that species. They be- 
lieved that everything that exists was made up 
out of various mathematical, numerical, and mor- 
phological combinations of differentiated units, 
or atoms of this one kind and body of substance 
or being. 

This idea was not new, but it was purely logi- 
cal and metaphysical. It had never as yet been 
scientifically and experimentally proven by exact 
science. Some of the ancient thinkers of India 
and Greece, and some modern thinkers like Spinoza 
and Goethe, and the still more recent scientific 
school of modern evolutionists, under the leader- 
ship of men like Spencer and Haeckel, believed in 
the absolute oneness of all matter, energy and 
being. But up to within a few years it had never 
been scientifically proven. Now it has been so 
proven, and the logic and intuition of the monists 
of the past and present has been grandly vindi- 



TENDENCY OF SCIENCE 39 

cated. It is now known certainly that there are 
not 80-odd different kinds of ultimate matter and 
atoms and beings in the world, but that there is 
one and only one. And so another pluralistic 
notion has been destroyed, and that a most funda- 
mental one, and the perfect oneness of the sub- 
stance of the world has now been experimentally 
proven. This amounts to nothing less than a 
revolution in science, and, following that, in philos- 
ophy, religion, and life. There is one and only 
one kind of matter, energy, and being in the world, 
and out of that one and only kind of matter and 
energy everything that exists is made and dif- 
ferentiated. Perfect oneness has now been proven 
as regards the kind, quality, and nature of matter 
or being. There is only one further question, if 
question it be, which remains to be answered, and 
that is this: Is there one and only one real body 
of matter, and being in the world, or are there 
many bona fide bodies of matter or many bona fide 
beings in the world? 

What is the answer which the physical and 
chemical scientists of to-day are going to give 
this question, if question it be? How do they 
conceive that this one kind of matter and energy 
exists, and under what form? The answer is this: 
1. They know that all of the 80-odd different 
kinds of atoms are composed of one kind of elec- 
trical corpuscles, in combinations of from 1,000 
to 200,000 or more. 2. They are also perfectly 
well assured that these electrical corpuscles of 



40 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

which all matter is made are merely minute and 
differentiated portions of one single, continuous 
medium, ocean, or globe of the pristine ether or 
" materia prima" which fills all space and endures 
throughout all time. They also conceive that 
these electrical corpuscles are little whirlpools, 
vortices, and condensations of ethereal and elec- 
trical energy which, as they circle and move 
throughout this omnipresent ocean of the undif- 
ferentiated ether, drag along with them, in pro- 
portion to their velocity, a certain amount of 
this ether; and it is this attached and bound up 
ether which gives to these electrical whirlpools 
their mass or mathematical quantity of matter. 
Thus science is proclaiming to-day with practical 
confidence and assurance, not only that there is 
but one kind of matter or being in the world, but 
also that there is numerically but one real body 
of matter or being, of which single and unitary 
body of being everything that exists is made and 
is a more or less complex differentiation and mani- 
festation. Science, therefore, has reduced all 
substance and being to a complete oneness, both 
numerical and qualitative, and it therefore de- 
clares that the seeming plurality of beings and 
things is a superficial illusion of the shallow 
senses, feelings, and impressions of man. 

As Prof. R. K. Duncan says, " The need felt 
by men of science, of reducing the physical uni- 
verse to a condition of oneness, of finding some 
one thing out of whose properties or qualities 



TENDENCY OF SCIENCE 41 

might proceed all that is," has at last been real- 
ized. Thus scientists have come, via experiment 
and objective observation, to the same conclu- 
sions that the monistic thinkers had previously 
reached. There is but one integral being in the 
world (materially at least) and that being, dur- 
ing its evolutionary and differentiating trans- 
formations, combines its differentiated elements 
into the infinite variety of superficial and phenom- 
enal forms that we perceive with our imperfect 
and half -blind eyes; and it does all this without 
ever for an instant losing its absolute and perfect 
organic oneness in this endless process of evolu- 
tionary division and differentiation any more than 
an egg in the shell loses its oneness when it divides, 
differentiates, and distinguishes itself into limbs, 
organs, and structures of many kinds. The egg 
in the shell does not lose its unity in the process 
of evolutionary differentiation and distinction; 
neither, in the same way, does the all-inclusive 
cosmic organism of the world lose its perfect or- 
ganic oneness in the cosmic process of organic 
division, differentiation, and distinguishment into 
an infinite variety of organic structures and parts. 
What happens to the cosmic organism during 
the process of cosmic evolution is not a loss of 
its original, ethereal oneness, but the gain of a 
higher, nobler, and more organic oneness. It ex- 
changes and transforms its simple, featureless, 
and monotonous unity for a complex, featureful, 
and infinitely rich and various unity. It ex- 



48 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

changes and transforms its sleepy, subconscious, 
and dreamy state of being for its wide-awake, 
self-conscious, and self-critical state, in which its 
spiritual potentialities are expressed and mani- 
fested in a multitude of highly individualized and 
personalized forms, like the human beings of this 
earth. 

As the roses are to the rosebush, as the eyes, 
ears, and brain are to the organism, so the human 
intelligences on this earth and the other similar 
intelligences on other planets are to the whole 
cosmic organism of the world. They are its eyes 
with which it sees itself, and they are its minds 
with which it knows itself, — and knows itself 
divine, or else nothing, no matter how great, 
heroic, and tragic is divine. 

In the analytical resolution of all matter into 
the electrical elements and differentiations of the 
primal ether, every form of absolute individuality 
in the material world has been destroyed; there 
are now no known or conceivable material individ- 
uals in existence, and material individuality of 
every kind has been once for all destroyed. 
Would-be pluralists, therefore, have but one ref- 
uge, — or imaginary and fallacious refuge, rather, 
— left to them, and that lies in the assumption 
that spiritual individuals may yet exist even 
though material individuals do not, and cannot, 
in the nature of things. But this refuge is a vain 
one, for this assumption is utterly untrue. 

The assumption is really this, that conscious- 



TENDENCY OF SCIENCE 48 

ness is a " thing " in itself, by itself, and for it- 
self, — that it is, in fact, an entity ; but this as- 
sumption has not a logical leg to stand on. Con- 
sciousness, as the very word implies, is not a 
" thing " or " entity " at all, but simply the 
psychic state and spiritual condition of some ex- 
tra-psychic, extra-spiritual thing. It is not a 
concrete entity at all, but a mere abstraction from 
a concrete entity, possessing both psychical and 
extra-psychical attributes. Whether these extra- 
psychical attributes are really material, in the old 
fashioned meaning of the word, or only quasi- 
material, or pseudo-material, or not material at 
all, makes no difference whatever. The only thing 
a monistic ontologist and psychologist need insist 
upon is that there are in the concrete being of 
the world both psychical and extra-psychical at- 
tributes and qualities, and that the psychical 
attributes refer exclusively to the spiritual states 
and conditions, while the extra-psychical and 
seemingly material attributes refer to the entita- 
tive, or seemingly substantial, qualities. The 
monistic ontologist and psychologist protests 
against the narrow, one-sided, and abstract defini- 
tion of concrete being in terms of only one set of 
its attributes, — viz., its state and condition at- 
tributes, — throwing aside and ignoring altogether 
its entitative attributes, which are just as real 
and just as necessary to be included in a true 
definition and conception of concrete being as the 
state and condition attributes. 



44 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

There can be no states or conditions at all un- 
less there is some real, entitative thing or being 
in those states and conditions; and these states 
and conditions cannot be the states and conditions 
of nothing at all, — of a zero, a cipher, a nothing, 
and non-entity; you cannot attach or attribute 
states and conditions to nothings, — to zeros, 
ciphers, and non-entities. They must be the 
states and conditions of something or some entity 
which is something more than its own states and 
something besides them. Hence this concrete 
soniething must have some extra-conscious at- 
tributes ; in other words, it must have some defi- 
nitely entitative attributes in addition to, and un- 
derlying as a foundation, its conscious states and 
conditions. 

As there can be no motion apart from some- 
thing entitative that moves, no action apart from 
an agent, no function apart from some structure, 
so there can be no conscious state or spiritual 
condition apart from some entitative thing or be- 
ing whose state and spiritual condition it is. 
States cannot exist alone and hang like castles 
in the air any more than motions or actions or 
functions can exist alone and hang in the air, 
apart from some real thing whose motions, activi- 
ties, and functions they are. Just this is the fal- 
lacious abstraction underlying all psychological 
and ontological dualism ; the unwarranted assump- 
tion that a state or condition of spirituality can 
exist apart from some extra-spiritual entity 



TENDENCY OF SCIENCE 45 

whose state and condition it is ; that spiritual in- 
dividuals and spiritual individuality can exist 
apart from extra-spiritual entities, which is evi- 
dently untrue. No; spiritual individuals cannot 
exist apart from extra-spiritual, or seemingly 
material, beings ; and spiritual individuality can- 
not exist apart from extra-spiritual individuality. 
If there is no material, or extra-spiritual, individ- 
uality, then there is and can be no abstract and 
purely spiritual individuality. If there are (in 
the nature of things as now known to us) no ma- 
terial, or extra-spiritual individuals, then there 
are and can be no purely spiritual individuals 
because these so-called purely spiritual individuals 
are nothing whatever but pure mental abstrac- 
tions in the imagination of man. 

Therefore, since recent science, in the resolu- 
tion of all matter and energy into the primal ether, 
has disproved conclusively the existence of all real 
material individual beings whatever, then of logi- 
cal necessity it has at the same time disproved 
the existence of any abstract and purely spirit- 
ual individuals also. Pure spirits are pure ab- 
stractions and as such cannot exist, and the dis- 
proof of material individuality is also the cor- 
relative disproof of spiritual individuality. Mod- 
ern science has disproved the existence of finite 
or fractional individuality of every kind, both ma- 
terial and spiritual. The individuals are dead, 
long live The Individual. The many individuals 
are banished, the One Individual remains. 



46 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

" The One remains, the many change and pass ; 
Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadow's fly." 2 

" God and I were in space alone, 

And nobody else in view; 

And God spake thus to me and said: 
' There were no people, living or dead, 

There was no earth and no sky o'erhead, 

There was only Myself in you. 

There are no such things as fear and sin; 
There is no You, you never have been; 
There is nothing at all but Me.' " 8 



a Shelley. 

» Ella Wheeler Wileox. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE UNIFYING TENDENCY OF 
PHILOSOPHY 

The need which men of science felt, " of reduc- 
ing the world to a condition of oneness," is a 
need and an instinct which is felt by all thinking 
beings, by philosophers especially. Philosophy is 
essentially a unified system of all knowledge. 
The world, as the contemplative and reflective 
mind sees it, is always in some genuine sense a 
single and unified whole; it is always the mind's 
universe, never its duiverse, pluriverse, or multi- 
verse. So it has been named, and time and prog- 
ress are continually proving the correctness of 
this name. 

The world is always united in the human mind 
and by the human mind, and undoubtedly, as Dr. 
Paul Carus says, this unity of the world within the 
mind simply represents the unity which exists in 
the objective world without the mind, because 
man's mind, as every monist must insist, is, in 
reality, the mind of the world itself, which has 
been developed in adaptation to the world as a 
whole and in an essential correspondence and 
harmony with it. 

47 



48 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

The mind cannot really conceive of more worlds 
or universes than one, of more integral beings 
than one. The mind cannot conceive of two in- 
tegral beings. It cannot conceive of two co- 
existing volumes of space; all space is one limit- 
less or self-limited volume of space. It can- 
not conceive of two parallel eternities of time; all 
time is one eternal stream of time. And every- 
thing that exists is enclosed within this one volume 
of space and endures within this one endless 
stream of time. Hence the one volume of space 
and the one stream of time unite all that exists 
into one compact body of being. 

The Infinite and Eternal cannot be two, but 
must only be one. There cannot be two coexist- 
ing infinities of space or two parallel eternities 
of time. All time is one and all space is one, and 
hence all being is one all-inclusive being. All be- 
ings and things in space and time unite together 
to make up one universal whole. Thus we are 
forced by the constitution of our minds to con- 
ceive of being as a whole, as absolutely and com- 
pletely one, in some genuine sense. Thus we ar- 
rive at the conception of an infinite and eternal 
being, occupying an infinite or limitless space and 
enduring throughout an infinite and limitless time. 

And now, since the exact and experimental 
scientists have practically proven the qualitative, 
quantitative, and numerical oneness of all material 
being as a whole, this logical and irresistible tend- 
ency of the human mind to unify its world of be- 



TENDENCY OF PHILOSOPHY 49 

ing has been practically and completely vindi- 
cated. The human mind is a function not merely 
of the so-called human organism and human 
brain; it is, with equal and even greater truth, 
a cosmic function of the whole cosmic organism 
of the world; as man's brain and mind has been 
developed out of his bodily and mental organism 
as a whole, and in essential adaptation to and 
correspondence with it, so, in the same way, man 
as a whole and his mind have been developed out 
of the body and mind of nature, and in essential 
adaptation to and correspondence with it. 

And this tendency of man's mind, which is also 
the mind of nature, to unify the world of nature 
is good evidence that the world of nature is ob- 
jectively united, as it is subjectively unified in 
man and nature's mind. The human mind of the 
cosmic organism is in essential correspondence 
and harmony with the cosmic organism whose 
mind it really is. In man, the universe as a vast 
cosmic organism becomes self-conscious and aware 
of itself. Our human consciousness is nature's 
cosmic consciousness; our human intelligence is 
nature's cosmic intelligence, expressing and mani- 
festing itself through us as through its brains 
and minds. Our minds are not our minds only; 
they are with equal and even greater truth the 
minds of the cosmos, and as such they must be in 
essential and developing harmony with it. Hence, 
the tendency of the cosmic mind to unify the cos- 
mic world may be taken as valid evidence for the 



50 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

objective unity of the cosmos. This unity of the 
universe is not a mere external unity, but it is a 
genuine internal unity, as modern science has al- 
ready proven. It is not a mere totality and ag- 
gregation, a mere external union, nor a mere ex- 
terior organization of really separate persons and 
things ; but it is, as modern science has now shown, 
a perfect internal unity, organic and systematic 
in character; a genuine unit, a perfect One. 

The fallacious assumption on the part of 
pluralist s (or rather pseudo-pluralists, for thor- 
oughgoing, uncompromising pluralists don't seem 
to exist) is that a number, — in fact, an infinite 
number, — of absolutely separate and independent, 
self-existing and self-sufficient beings and things 
can unite or get together, and so constitute a uni- 
verse or totality of being. While this assumption 
perhaps cannot be directly disproven, its difficul- 
ties are so many and its improbability so great 
that it can obtain little if any standing among 
unprejudiced thinkers. There is no reason in the 
world to insure why these many separate little 
universes in themselves should ever get together, 
ever be known to each other, or have anything like 
the same natures making union possible ; and even 
if they did unite, there would be nothing to insure 
their remaining united and not disbanding at any 
time, thus making the continued existence of the 
totality absolutely uncertain. There is no rea- 
son whatever for assuming that such separate be- 
ings and things could melt, merge, and run into 



TENDENCY OF PHILOSOPHY 51 

each other as everything in this world actually 
does. The perfectly intimate fusion of all mat- 
ter and energy, the unobstructed, unrestricted 
passage of all matter and energy from one form 
into all the others, the mutual interchanges, the 
reciprocal actions and influences, the perfectly 
close interconnexions and interdependence of all 
things upon all other things, negatives in the most 
emphatic way any idea that these things and 
beings of the world can be in any true sense sepa- 
rate and entity- tight individuals. 

It is perfectly evident that no plurality of 
things could construct any such universe as this 
one of ours, and it is not some other possible uni- 
verse that we are discussing, but this one here in 
which we exist; and that no plurality of beings 
should create such a universe as this is certain. 
Science has now proven positively that this uni- 
verse is completely and perfectly one; one in the 
kind of stuff it is made of, and one also in number. 

" It would be self-contradictory to attribute ab- 
solute independence to the elements of being while 
accepting the reality of reciprocal action . . . 
for isolated, entirely independent things could not 
stand in a relation of reciprocal action to one 
another. . . . There must, therefore, be a prin- 
ciple of unity which renders reciprocal action and 
orderly dependence possible. . . . For these rea- 
sons monism, which takes as its basis this recipro- 
cal action and interconnexion among things, and 
finds in these a principle of unity will always 



m THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

... be preferable to pluralism. Pluralism must 
either deny interconnexion and reciprocal action 
or regard them as illusory." 1 

As Prof. Harald Hoffding says : " In the prin- 
ciple of unity we have a thought which is con- 
clusive for us. Philosophy accepts the unity as 
a necessary presupposition of the interconnexion 
of the manifold. The relation of reciprocal ac- 
tion will always constrain us to assume the exist- 
ence of a bond, a unity, which renders this recipro- 
cal action possible ... a force or power, in vir- 
tue of which everything ... is interconnected 
and held together. The principle of unity is a 
necessary presupposition, if we are to understand 
being." 

There can be no question, then, with the evi- 
dence we have before us to-day, that the universe 
is, as its name implies, a uni-being, an all-inclusive 
cosmic organism; and that no other integral in- 
dividual exists in this our world. As regards the 
relation of this organic conception of the Cosmos 
to the persistent and world-old idea of God as 
the Supreme Being, Prof. Hoffding says, " If we 
define God as the rational principle of being, and 
also, therefore, as the principle of the unity of 
being, it appears possible to arrive at a concept 
of God capable of being harmonized with scientific 
knowledge. 

The ideal of knowledge would be attained if we 

i"The Philosophy of Religion," Prof. Harald Hoffding. 



TENDENCY OF PHILOSOPHY 53 

could unite . . . unity and multiplicity in one 
concept." And it seems perfectly evident that 
this ideal is attained in the organic conception of 
the Cosmos; in the concept of the universe as a 
genuine cosmic organism, of which the manifold 
parts are the bona fide cosmic organs, structures, 
and functions. And if we define God as the 
supreme being of the world and as this genuine 
cosmic organism of the world, then it seems to me 
we have arrived at a conception of the world and 
of God which is both perfectly scientific and 
really religious. Nothing greater than the Uni- 
verse can be known to man, and nothing less than 
the greatest being known, or less than the Uni- 
verse itself as an organic whole of being, should 
be regarded or known by the name of God. As 
Dr. Paul Carus says, " God and the Universe are 



" What were a God who sat outside to scan 
The spheres that neath His finger circling ran? 
God dwells in all, and moves the world, and molds, 
Himself and Nature in one form enfolds, 
So that what in Him lives and moves and is, 
Neither His spirit, nor His strength will miss." 3 

2 Dr. Carus now says he believes we should only call the 
laws of the universe, God, and not the universe itself, as 
an all-inclusive whole of being. I cannot, on this point, 
agree with him. The concrete whole is a greater and truer 
God than any abstract part, however dignified or refined 
it may be. 

3 Goethe. 



54 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

" As wider skies break on man's view, 
God greatens in his growing mind; 
Each age he dreams his God anew, 
And leaves his older God behind. 
He sees the boundless scheme dilate 
In star and blossom, sky and clod; 
And as his universe grows great, 
He dreams for it a greater God." * 



* John W. Chachmck. 



CHAPTER V 

THE DYNAMIC AND DIFFUSIVE 
CHARACTER OF ALL BEING 

"Nothing in the world is single, 
All things by a law divine, 
In one another's being mingle." 

Another great and significant truth which mod- 
ern science has securely established is that of the 
kinetic and diffusive character and the ceaseless 
circulatory movement of all the matter, energy, 
and being in the universe. This great truth, — 
which the philosophers of ancient Greece dimly 
recognized and called " flux " or flow ; which 
Herbert Spencer has characterized as " the con- 
tinual redistribution of matter and motion " ; 
which biologists call " metabolism " or vital meta- 
morphosis ; and which the philosophers of ancient 
India recognized, as shown by the doctrine of the 
transmigration and reincarnation of souls, — has 
now been practically and scientifically established 
in harmony with the laws of the transformation, 
equivalence, and conservation of energy. Mat- 
ter is now defined in terms of electrical and ether- 
ial energy, and energy is necessarily active, dif- 
fusive, continuous, circulatory, and non-atomic in 
structure. 

55 



56 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

No such a thing as absolute rest and fixity ex- 
ists. Every particle of matter and portion of 
energy in the universe is on the move and on the 
go. It is (either visibly or invisibly) ceaselessly 
travelling and circulating, round and round, from 
place to place, and from form to* form, or it is 
continually revolving and rotating in some place 
and form for a little while and then passing on 
and out to some other place and form, its vacated 
place and form being meanwhile taken by other 
particles of matter or portions of energy just 
like itself, as in the cases of whirlpools, whirl- 
winds, and vortices of every kind. " Rest is no- 
where." . . . The solidest body hides within it 
inconceivable velocities. Even the molecules of 
granite and iron have their orbits as do the stars, 
and revolve as ceaselessly. No energy is ever 
lost. It changes its form, it assumes Protean 
disguises, but " it is everywhere a unit " ; it may 
disappear from the earth, still — 

" Somewhere, yet, that atom's force 
Moves the light poised universe." 1 

Under these diffusive and circulatory conditions 
of all the matter and energy of the world, there 
is not and never can be one single particle of mat- 
ter and energy which is the private, exclusive, and 
personal property and possession of any finite 
form whatever. On the contrary, every atom of 
matter and energy in the world is the common, 

i Steele's "Physics." 



CHARACTER OF ALL BEING 57 

public, and universal property and possession of 
every thing that exists, has existed, and will ex- 
ist. There is not one single atom of private mat- 
ter and energy in this whole whirling and rest- 
less world, and therefore there is not and never 
can be one single, exclusive, and individual being 
in the entire universe, excepting, of course, the 
Universe itself. The entire body of the universal 
being is common and public to all, without any 
exclusions or exceptions. Every single particle 
of it all has been the transient and temporary 
property and possession of an infinite number and 
variety of forms in the endless past and will be 
again in the endless future. "All nature," says 
Steele's " Chemistry," "is a torrent of ceaseless 
change. We are but parts of a grand system, 
and the elements we use are not our own; the 
water we drink, the food we eat, the air we breathe, 
to-day have been used a thousand times before, 
and that by the vilest beggars, and the lowest 
earth-worms. In nature all is common and no use 
is base. Those particles of matter we so fondly 
call our own and decorate so carefully, a few 
months since may have dragged boats on the canal, 
or waved in the meadows as grass and corn. 
From us they will pass on their ceaseless round 
to develop other forms of vegetation and of life, 
whereby the same atoms may freeze on Arctic 
snows, bleach on torrid plains, be beauty in the 
poet's brain, strength in the blacksmith's arm, 
or beef on the butcher's block. Hamlet must have 



58 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

been somewhat more of a chemist than a madman 
when he gravely assured the king that " a man 
may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king 
and eat of the fish that hath fed of the worm." 
Shakespeare expresses the same chemical thought 
when he says : 

" Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay, 
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away. 
Oh ! that the earth which kept the world in awe 
Should patch a wall to expel the winter's flaw." 

This ceaseless circulation and endless trans- 
formation of the being of the world renders ab- 
solutely and forever impossible the existence of 
any permanently individual forms whatever. 
There is not a single being in the world, and es- 
pecially a living one, which privately owns either 
the matter or the spirit of which it is constituted. 
Both its body and its soul are the common, public 
property, and democratic and communistic pos- 
session of every other thing that exists. The 
existence of private, individual matter and mind, 
or combinations of them, is absolutely and forever 
impossible. There is not, therefore, and never can 
be, one single private person in the universe ex- 
cepting, of course, the Universe itself as the in- 
tegral and individual organism of the world. 

" It was his faith, perhaps is mine, 
That life in all its forms is one 
And that its unseen conduits run 



CHARACTER OF ALL BEING 59 

Unseen, but in unbroken line, 

From that great fountain head divine 

Through man and beast, through grain and grass." 2 

" Onward and on, the eternal Pan, 
Who layeth the world's incessant plan, 
Halteth never in one shape, 
But forever doth escape, 
Like wave or flame, into new forms 
Of gem and air, of plants and worms ; 
I that to-day am a pine, 
Yesterday was a bundle of grass. 

" The world is the ring of his spells, 
And the play of his miracles, 
The rushing metamorphosis, 
Dissolving all that fixture is ; 
Melts things that be to things that seem, 
And solid nature to a dream. 
All the forms are fugitive; 
But the substances survive, 
Ever fresh the broad creation, 
A divine improvisation; 
As the bee through the garden ranges, 
From world to world the Godhead changes; 
As the sheep go feeding through the waste, 
From form to form He maketh haste; 
Alike to Him the better, the worse, 
The glowing angel, the outcast corse, 
Thou asketh in fountains and in fires, 
He is the essence that inquires, 
He is the axis of the star, 
He is the sparkle of the spar, 
2 Longfellow. 



60 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

He is the heart of every creature, 
He is the meaning of each feature, 
And His mind it is the sky, 
That all it holds more deep, more high, 

" His servant, Death, with solving rite, 
Pours finite into Infinite. 
Wilt thou freeze love's tidal flow 
Whose streams through nature circling go, 
Nail the wild star to its track 
On the half-climbed Zodiac? 
Light is light which radiates, 
Blood is blood which circulates, 
Life is life which generates, 
And many-seeming life is One, 
Wilt thou transfix and make it none? 
Built of furtherance and pursuing, 
Not of spent deeds but of doing, 
Silent rushes the swift Lord, 
Through ruined systems still restored. 

" Waters with tears of ancient sorrow, 
Apples of Eden ripe to-morrow, 
House and tenant go to ground, 
Lost in God, in Godhead found." 3 



3 Emerson. 



CHAPTER VI 
THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL BODIES 

The history of the perceptible world begins with 
a nebula. The beginning or birth of a new world 
follows the ending, death, and disintegration of 
some old and preceding world. The worlds come 
and go in procession just as all smaller bodies do, 
only the procession is larger and lasts longer. 
How do the old worlds end their existence, and 
how do the new ones begin? A world, solar sys- 
tem, or astronomic organism is old when it reaches 
the cold, hard, rigid, and dead state of the moon. 
A solar or starry system or stellar organism like 
our own will be old when the sun, as well as the 
planets and satellites, have reached this cold, hard, 
rigid, and motionless state. What happens after 
that? Either through collision or atomic disin- 
tegration these old, dead, and lifeless worlds are 
converted into a nebula, or incandescent gas, at 
the highest attainable temperature. 

Just in what ways this state of nebulosity and 

incandescence is reached by these old and lifeless 

worlds is not yet quite certain, but that they are 

so converted into a vast volume of nebulous and 

incandescent gas is Unquestioned, practically. 

With the development of this incandescent gas and 

61 



m THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

nebula the new world is born, and its future his- 
tory and evolution follows on the gradual radia- 
tion and loss of its internal heat to outer space 
and distant bodies in other worlds. Incidental 
to this cooling and contraction of the nebula it 
is differentiated into a great central sun, with at- 
tendant planets and satellites. A sort of 
astronomic cooperation and division of labor, 
functions, and structures takes place between the 
sun and its planets. The sun furnishes the light, 
active, and kinetic energies of life and motion, 
while the planets furnish the field for their vital 
and spiritual activities and operations, and also 
the heavier and more substantial bases of life, the 
result of this cooperation and division of labors 
being the production, development, and differen- 
tiation of a multiform and multitudinous world of 
moving, living, and conscious beings and things 
on the exterior surfaces of the planets. 

The vast volume of incandescent gas in which 
the world begins its visible and perceptible history 
and evolution is composed of the lightest chemical 
elements and atoms, and these chemical atoms, it 
is now known, are composed of electrical cor- 
puscles or sub-atoms, and these electrical 
corpuscles are held to be little vortices, differen- 
tiations, and condensations of the omnipresent 
ocean of the primal Ether, or " materia prima," 
which fills all space, is perfectly continuous and 
indivisible, and of the most perfect elasticity and 
extremest tenuity. 



EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL BODIES 68 

The worlds begin, therefore, in the omnipresent, 
indivisible, and unitary ether, through the differ- 
entiation within its body and substance of little 
electrical whirlpools, called corpuscles or electrons, 
which move throughout its volume as little whirl- 
pools in a river or as whirlwinds and cyclones in 
the air. This condensation and differentiation of 
the primary sub-atoms is due to the lowering of 
the temperature of the ether as the nebulous gas 
begins gradually to radiate and lose its internal 
heat. As this radiation and loss of heat and 
internal motion proceeds, these corpuscles tend 
to cluster together into larger combinations, 
which constitute the chemical atoms, and these, 
in turn, cluster and combine into the still larger 
physical molecules, and the molecules finally com- 
bine into the crystals ; and here the evolution of 
inorganic compounds and elements ends. 

The next great step in the process of evolution 
is the development of the large, complex, and col- 
loid molecules of organic matter, and here organic 
evolution and the development of life, sensation, 
and mind in its visible and perceptible forms, be- 
gins. The next step in organic evolution is the 
development of protoplasm, or the otherwise form- 
less and undifferentiated " matter of life," out 
of the organic molecules. Then arises next the 
living cell or micro-organism, the protophyte and 
protozoon, with its definite form, cell membrane 
and cell nucleus. Next follows the cell commun- 
ity, or the multicellular organism, the cenobia, 



64 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

which is a more or less large cluster of single and 
simple cells. 

After this comes the tissue-forming organism, 
the histon, and to this general and higher class 
belong all the higher plants, animals, and men. 
Here what is called organic evolution proper ends, 
but this distinction, perhaps, ought not to be 
made. Another very distinct step is now taken 
in the upward progress of life and mind, and this, 
perhaps, is the highest and last. The last and 
highest stage in the evolutionary process is, so 
far as known, the beginning and development of 
the social organism, — the super-organic person, 
the psycho-zoon, — a psycho-organism I would 
call a society, because it (in the case of man at 
least) is essentially an organization or organism 
of minds and intelligences, and hence it is a 
psycho-zoon, or psycho-organism, — a society of 
minds, an organism of minds. It is essentially and 
peculiarly a psychic individual, though like all 
lower, smaller, and inferior individuals and organ- 
isms it is a compound, synthetic, and social body. 

Now, let us review this evolutionary process in 
order to see what it signifies to us. 1. There is 
the omnipresent and perfectly unitary body of the 
primary ether. 2. There is the primary differ- 
entiation of this ether into the electrons or cor- 
puscles. 3. There is the secondary and synthetic' 
differentiation which constitutes the atoms. 4. 
The tertiary differentiation constitutes the mole- 
cules. 5. The fourth degree of compound differ- 



EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL BODIES 65 

entiation is the crystal in the inorganic world and 
the cell in the organic world. 6. The fifth degree 
of compound differentiation is the multicellular 
organism. 7. The sixth degree of synthetic and 
complex differentiation is the tissue-forming 
organism. 8. And the seventh degree of syn- 
thetic differentiation is the society or state. 

Now, the things to be noted in this process are 
these. First, evolution begins in and with a per- 
fectly continuous and unitary being and body, a 
true individual thing; and what is truly one and 
individual cannot lose its unity and individuality, 
but must always retain it. But this perfectly 
unified body and being can and does differentiate 
itself into seemingly separate and distinguishable 
parts ; but these differentiations of the unitary 
being are nothing more than differentials, — they 
never become, and never can become, genuine in- 
dividuals. Thus from the electrons up to a hu- 
man society or state there are at least seven stages 
and degrees of compound and synthetic differen- 
tiation; the ions, atoms, molecules, crystals, cells, 
cenobia, histona and psychozoa are all equally dif- 
ferentiations of the original and unitary ether, 
and not one of them is or can be a true, absolute 
and positive individual. The only possible true 
individual is the whole cosmic organism, which 
includes all these various differentials as its own 
structures, organs, and functions. 

There are no true, bona fide individuals any- 
where discoverable as developing during the proc- 



66 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

ess of evolution out of the original ether. The 
theory of evolution, therefore, negatives emphati- 
cally any assumption or assertion as to the ex- 
istence and development of finite individuals of 
any kind. The evolutionary process shows that 
all the so-called individual beings and things in 
the world are nothing more or less than differen- 
tials. There is no room or place in the theory of 
evolution for individuals at all; the only things 
that evolution develops are differentials, which 
are distinctly different things from individuals. 
Evolution is a process and tendency towards dif- 
ferentiation and differentially, and it is not, as 
some one has said, " a tendency towards individ- 
uation " and individuality unless we agree to re- 
gard differentiation as comparative and practical 
individuation, and differentially as the only kind 
of comparative individuality that is possible in 
nature and in the evolutionary process. 

Another fact of great importance to be noted 
in this evolutionary process is this, that every 
synthetic and compound differential of the origi- 
nal ether is a true association and society. Thus 
the atoms, molecules, crystals, cells, cenobia, his- 
tona, and psychozoa are all genuine societies and 
collections of lower and smaller units, and this 
fact alone negatives the notion that any of these 
things can be true individuals, for an individual 
must be regarded as something simple and not 
compound in its nature. So that man, who is a 
histozoon, is a compound, synthetic differential of 



EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL BODIES 67 

the sixth degree of composition, and as such, of 
course, he cannot be an individual being. Man, 
as a histozoon, is also a society of the fifth degree 
of composition, and as a society he cannot be an 
individual. 

Both as a compound differential and as a com- 
pound society of cells, man is debarred from being 
a true individual being. Once more we see that 
the only possible individual being is the whole cos- 
mic organism, and if that is not an individual, 
then there is not a single true individual in ex- 
istence. 

Another important fact to be noted is this, — 
a man is no less a society than a human society 
or state is, and a state or human society is no less 
a comparative individual and no less a compara- 
tive organism than a single man is. In fact, since 
a human society stands later and higher on the 
ladder of the evolutionary process, so, for that 
reason, it stands, as a comparative organism and 
as a comparative individual, on a higher evolu- 
tionary plane than the individual man. A man 
is a lower and a society is a higher comparative 
organism. A man is a lower and a society is a 
higher comparative individual. This is not poetry 
but hard, scientific, matter of fact. 

Nature, in the process of evolution, therefore, 
does not produce or develop positive individual 
beings of any kind or grade. Neither does it pro- 
duce or develop, we may say, positive organisms 
of any kind or grade. What nature produces are 



68 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

positive differentials as parts, structures, organs, 
and functions of itself; and nature, or the uni- 
verse itself, is the only absolute and positive in- 
dividual and organism there is. All finite and 
fractional organisms and individuals (so-called) 
are really only differentials, and can only be re- 
garded as individuals and organisms in this re- 
stricted and comparative sense and meaning of 
being differentials of different kinds and grades, 
from the simplest and lowest to the most complex 
and highest. These differentials may be regarded 
as comparative individuals and comparative or- 
ganisms, and in this sense only we may speak of 
them as such. 

There are grades of differ en tiahty in Nature, 
therefore, and grades of comparative individuality 
and comparative organization in the living and 
conscious world. The study of the process of 
evolution shows us with perfect clearness that the 
highest grades of comparative individuality and 
organization are those which are the most highly 
compounded, the most complex, and the most so- 
cial in form. 

Instead of looking in the direction of the great- 
est simplicity, of the smallest size, of the least 
collective and least complex composition, and of 
the least social character for the truest individual- 
ity and the truest organism, we should look in the 
very opposite direction. In order to find the 
truest, highest, and greatest individuals and or- 
ganisms, we should look in the direction of the 



EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL BODIES 69 

greatest complexity and composition, of the great- 
est associations and societies, of the largest and 
most extensive bodies. In other words, in order 
to find the truest individuals and organisms we 
must not look in the direction of the ions, atoms, 
molecules, and cells, but in the opposite direction, 
— in the direction of the cell-community, the man, 
the human society, and finally in the direction of 
the whole complex and collective organism of the 
Universe. We must not look for individuality in 
the direction of the most fractional and infinitesi- 
mal elements of the world, but in the direction of 
most integral and complete bodies and body of 
the world. We must look for individuality in the 
largest wholes, and not in the smallest parts and 
fractions of being. We must look for it in so- 
ciety, rather than in the isolated man ; and in the 
universe as a living, conscious, and organic whole, 
rather than in any smaller part of it. 

Man is not a positive individual at all, since 
he is a five times compounded complex of smaller 
and lower units and differentials of the original 
ether ; and when we recall the fact that this swarm 
of ions, atoms, molecules, and cells which we call 
an individual man is not even a fixed-for-life, per- 
manent and stationary collection of lower units, 
but is actually only a streaming, passing, and 
transient swarm, in which the old, exhausted, and 
inert units are continually rapidly passing on and 
out of the swarm, while new ones are as rapidly and 
continually taking their places so that it is never 



70 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

for any appreciable length of time made up of 
same units or of a permanent body of units, and 
that every little while a complete exchange of 
units takes place and it is composed of an entirely 
new body or swarm of units, then the utter impos- 
sibility of such a streaming collection of units be- 
ing a positively individual being is as plain and 
Certain as anything can be. 

No, the individual man, so-called, is no more a 
positive individual than a society, state, or nation 
is, for it is just like them, — an association of 
lower and smaller units which come and go, and 
flow in and out, are born, live, and die within the 
social body. Nothing is comparatively perma- 
nent except the form of the body; the substance 
and the elementary units are completely transient 
and ephemeral. And the individual man, instead 
of being a truer individual and a truer organism 
than a society or state, is not so true or high a 
one in the evolutionary scale of development. 
Men have been looking in the wrong direction for 
the true individual; they have been looking down 
in the direction of the little fractional and ele- 
mentary subdivisions of the integral and unitary 
whole of being instead of looking up in the direc- 
tion of the integral and unitary organism itself. 
They have been looking for it in the parts instead 
of in the Whole ; in the fractions instead of in the 
Integer of being; in the cosmic organs, instead 
of in the cosmic Organism; in the human parts, 
instead of in the divine Whole. In other words, 



EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL BODIES 71 

they have been looking for it in man instead of in 
God, the all-inclusive, cosmic-social Being of the 
world. God is the one and only true individual 
and organism there is. All other so-called indi- 
viduals and organisms, like man, are merely 
pseudo-individuals and pseudo-organisms. 



CHAPTER VII 
THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL MINDS 

What is the nature and constitution of the 
mind? By pluralistic, individualistic, and dual- 
istic psychologists, on the one hand, mind is re- 
garded as an entity, separate and distinct from the 
body, which is another and opposite kind of an 
entity. 

By monistic psychologists, on the other hand, 
both mind and body are regarded merely as the 
subjective and objective, inner-appearing and 
outer-appearing, aspects of one indivisible, con- 
crete entity which possesses both subjective-ap- 
pearing and objective-appearing attributes, or 
mental and apparently material attributes. The 
material-appearing attributes of concrete being 
are what we may call its entitative attributes to 
distinguish them from its purely psychical ones. 
The entitative attributes of concrete being may 
be material or physical in character, or they may 
be in reality so different from what matter and 
force seems to us that we may only call them 
quasi-material or quasi-physical. But they are 
at least something different from purely mental 

attributes, and something extra and in addition 

72 



EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL MINDS 73 

to mental attributes. Hence we may certainly 
call them extra-mental attributes, even if we can- 
not be sure yet of being right in calling them ma- 
terial and energetic attributes. 

Mind in itself and by itself is a non-entity, a 
mere mental abstraction by the analyzing mind 
from the concrete and whole reality ; and the same 
criticism is equally true of matter. Pure mind 
apart from any matter, and pure matter apart 
from any mind are both equally pure abstractions 
and hence non-entities. Neither the one nor the 
other has any concrete existence. They exist 
apart and separate nowhere except in the analyz- 
ing and abstracting mind of man. Iron, for ex- 
ample, is hard, and flesh is soft. Hardness and 
softness, respectively, are attributes and qualities 
of the concrete things, but hardness and softness 
do not have a separate and entitative existence 
apart from the things which are hard and soft. 
Hardness and softness are not things in them- 
selves and by themselves, but only the mentally 
abstracted qualities of the things in themselves. 

Hardness and softness are mere mental abstrac- 
tions and products of mental analysis, and as 
such they do not concretely exist. So, in like 
manner, living beings are conscious, and conscious- 
ness is a quality and attribute, or a state and 
spiritual condition, of living beings. But as the 
hardness does not and cannot exist apart from 
the thing which is hard, so neither can the con- 
sciousness exist apart from the concrete entity 



74 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

that is conscious and aware. Consciousness or 
awareness, like hardness or softness, is a pure ab- 
straction from the concrete being that is conscious 
and aware. 

A consciousness, as a supposed concrete entity, 
does not exist any more than an entity or a thing 
called a hardness or a softness exists. A con- 
sciousness or a mind is a pure abstraction, and 
as such it does not and cannot possibly exist. 
Consciousness is a psychical condition in which 
living, substantial, and entitative beings exist. 
Mind is a state of awareness and not a thing in 
itself, and has no existence apart from the entita- 
tive and extra-mental being that is aware. 

The expressions " a mind," " a consciousness," 
" a soul," or " a spirit " are illogical and untrue, 
because mind, consciousness, soul, and spirit are 
nothing more or less than a peculiar state and 
condition of a certain degree of intensity in which 
living things exist. A consciousness apart from 
something whose conscious state it is, a mind apart 
from something whose mental state it is, is impos- 
sible and logically inconceivable, and as a scien- 
tific and experimental fact it is utterly unknown 
and discounted by exact science. Mind, therefore, 
is not a thing, but only a state and condition of a 
thing, and a mind apart from some real and sub- 
stantial being whose mental state and condition 
it is, is an illogical and unscientific fallacy. No 
real being can exist unless it exists in some state 
or condition, and no state or condition can exist 



EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL MINDS 75 

unless it is the state and condition of some real 
being. A state which was the state of nothing, — 
of a non-entity, — or a non-entity which existed in 
some state or condition, are both illogical and im- 
possible. A concrete entity and being must be 
something more than a mere state or a mere con- 
dition. It must be something more than a mere 
consciousness or a mere mind. It must have to 
begin with some entitative, substantial, or extra- 
mental attributes. It must be something first, be- 
fore it can become conscious and aware. 

There is another most important and comple- 
mentary conclusion which must logically and 
inevitably be drawn from the above conception of 
mind and body. As science declares and demon- 
strates that mind does not, and logically cannot, 
exist apart from body, so, on the other hand, it is 
logically forced and bound to declare that body 
cannot exist apart from mind or some kind and 
degree of a psychical state and condition, no mat- 
ter how faint, low, and attenuated this state or 
condition may be. As it declares that pure mind 
apart from matter is a pure abstraction and il- 
lusion, so it is logically forced to declare that pure 
matter apart from some kind and degree of mental 
condition, is a pure abstraction and a pure illu- 
sion. Science, therefore, has been forced to the 
conclusion that mind and matter coexist univer- 
sally, and in indissoluble conjunction and unity, 
in the entire concrete being of the world. There 
is no mind (or mental state) apart from matter, 



76 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

and no matter (or real being) without mind of 
some kind and degree. The two coexist every- 
where in conjunction, and they actually cannot 
be clearly conceived to exist apart. We cannot 
conceive of a mental state apart from some real 
entity whose state it is; and we cannot conceive 
of any real entity without conceiving it to exist 
in some state which is in some true sense more or 
less psychical in nature, — a state which is not in 
some true sense a psychical state, is, in fact, no 
state at all. A purely material state is, in fact, 
no state at all, and cannot be conceived of as a 
state. It is the negation of all states, and we 
cannot conceive a being or thing to exist in no 
state at all, or in a state which is the negation of 
all states. A state is necessarily a psychical con- 
dition, or else it is no state at all. 1 

Modern scientists as a rule were anxious to 
prove that mind could not exist apart from brain, 
body, and matter, and they have practically 
proved it ; but the complementary conclusion that 
matter could not exist apart from mind or some sort 
of psychical condition was only gradually and 
with difficulty realized by them. Gradually and 
irresistibly, however, the logic of the proposition 

i Further, pure matter is ' non est' and if there is no 
pure matter there can be no purely material states, for 
there are no purely material things. 1. A purely material 
thing cannot be conceived, and, 2, a purely material state 
cannot exist, for there are no purely material things to 
exist in that state, or rather, negation of a state, — and 
non-state, in fact. 



EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL MINDS 77 

and the evidence for its truth began to be ob- 
served. Now the foremost scientists accept this 
conclusion as inevitable and indisputable, and it 
is now a generally accepted scientific truth. The 
acceptance of the law of evolution forced the con- 
clusion upon scientific men. The great working 
principle of modern science is the principle of con- 
servation, — the principle that " something cannot 
come out of nothing " (" ex nihUo nihil fit "), and 
that " something cannot go into nothing," but that 
everything that exists or can exist must come out 
of or go into something exactly and mathemati- 
cally equivalent to itself; and if it disappears to 
our eyes, it disappears into something exactly 
equivalent to itself. 

Science denies the possibility or conceivability 
of either bona fide creation or annihilation. It 
affirms and proves the infinite trans form ability of 
everything into something exactly equivalent. 
The law of evolution and devolution is not a law 
of creation or destruction, either in a short period 
of time or in a longer and infinite period of time. 
It is not even a law of absolute and endless devel- 
opment, as many people imagine, in the sense that 
in the universe as a whole the universe as a whole 
is eternally growing better and better and into 
a higher and higher form. On the contrary, the 
law of evolution, — since it is based entirely upon 
the laws of causation and the transformation, 
equivalence, and conservation of energy, — de- 
clares, and is bound to declare, that the universe 



78 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

is an absolutely conservative system which, as a 
whole and at any given time, is always equivalent 
to itself as a whole at any other time throughout 
all eternity. 

The law of evolution is, in fact, a law of eternal 
equivalence and conservation. The " status quo " 
is always maintained. Thus while in a finite and 
partial sense it is a law of endless change and trans- 
formation, elevation and depression, in the finite 
and partial forms of the cosmos, yet at the same 
time, and as a logical necessity, it is, as regards 
the infinite or limitless universe as a whole, a law 
of eternal permanence and changelessness. While 
every part of the universe is eternally changing, 
the universe as a whole never changes. It is eter- 
nally conservative and remains in " statu quo" 
" It is the same to-day, yesterday, and forever. ,, 
It neither grows larger nor smaller, higher nor 
lower, better nor worse. It is good, we have sci- 
entific reasons for believing, and does not need 
to grow eternally better. 

The problem of mind as it presented itself to 
the evolutionary scientist and philosopher was 
this. What is mind, how does it evolve, and what 
does it evolve out of? Accepting as his unerring 
principle of logic and truth that something cannot 
come out of nothing or go into nothing, and that 
something cannot come out of something else which 
is not in the last analysis equivalent fundamentally 
to itself, he was forced to assume and assert that 
mind cannot come out of the essentially and totally 



EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL MINDS 79 

mindless, that something cannot come out of some- 
thing intrinsically and totally different from, and 
discordant with, itself. As you cannot get some- 
thing out of nothing or something greater out of 
something less, so with equal logic you cannot 
get something out of something entirely and in- 
trinsically different. The law of equivalence and 
conservation vetoes the possibility of getting some- 
thing different out of the utterly unequal, or ut- 
terly unlike. Cause and effect imply basic 
equivalence and basic likeness, both qualitative and 
quantitative, between things which follow each 
other in causal sequence. You can't draw water 
out of an empty well, grow figs on thistles, or, like 
a stage magician, pull yards of ribbons and live 
pigeons out of an utterly empty hat. Science 
knows nothing of miracles or sleight-of-hand per- 
formances in nature. It demands an equivalent, a 
"ipiid pro quo," for every transaction in the uni- 
verse. It sees all nature's commerce as a perfect, 
rational, and equitable exchange and barter, and 
not as an irrational and inequitable game of bunco. 
All the changes which science discovers in na- 
ture are exchanges and interchanges of equivalent 
energies. It is nothing but a commerce of ener- 
gies and substances, wherein the imports and ex- 
ports, incomes and outgoes, all balance each other 
to an absolute perfection in the long and eternal 
cosmic run. Therefore you cannot evolve mind 
out of the mindless, or consciousness out of the 
utterly unconscious. You cannot get more out 



80 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

of anything than that thing originally contained, 
actually or potentially, in the beginning. You 
could not extract mind out of utterly and intrinsi- 
cally mindless matter, for if you could do that, 
you could get something (mind) out of something 
(pure matter) which did not in the least contain 
it. Or you could get something (mind) out of 
something (pure matter) which was utterly and 
intrinsically unlike and unequal to it ; and neither 
of these things is logically possible or conceivable. 
Hence modern science was driven irresistibly and 
inevitably to the conclusion that all the matter 
in the universe is in a more or less conscious or 
psychic state of some kind and degree, and that 
no absolutely or potentially mindless matter, no 
pure matter, no dead and brute matter, exists. 
Such matter as that is a pure abstraction, and 
concrete matter must all possess some faint and 
attenuated psychic state at the least. 

This is the doctrine or panpsychism, or all- 
mindism, and many of the leading scientists and 
philosophers have given it their endorsement and 
accepted it as a necessary part of the monistic 
philosophy. Prof. Ernst Haeckel is a foremost 
champion of this theory, and no one would accuse 
him of mystical, idealistic, or superstitious tend- 
encies. Prof. Haeckel proposes a scale of twelve 
(1£) stages of sensibility or sensation from the 
atoms up to man, and he says: " It is better to 
speak of the unconscious sensation of the atoms 
as feeling (aesthesis), and their unconscious will 



EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL MINDS 81 

as inclination (tropesis)." But it seems to me 
that while we are compelled, logically, and also 
through accumulating scientific evidence, to affirm 
the universality of psychic states in all matter, 
yet it is impossible for us to conceive clearly what 
these lowest forms of sensibility are like, because 
they must be so greatly different from our own. 

In the lowest forms of protoplasmic life the evi- 
dence of sensibility is plain, while in speaking of 
the atoms of chemistry which are far lower down, 
Haeckel says that " every shade of inclination 
from complete indifference to the fiercest passion 
is exemplified in the chemical relations of the vari- 
ous elements towards each other." Logic and the 
law of evolution and accumulating evidence of 
various kinds compel us to assume and assert the 
universal existence of mind, — or of subjectivity, 
rather, — in some form and degree, and also that 
the highly developed, compounded, and intensified 
mind of man has been gradually evolved and dif- 
ferentiated out of the diffused, dispersed, attenu- 
ated, and undifferentiated mind or subjectivity of 
the ethereal matter or being of universe. It must 
have been there originally, potentially, and in 
germ, or it never could have arrived here in the 
mind of man. 

Now science assumes, and is compelled to as- 
sume, that the ether is one single, continuous and 
indivisible body or volume of matter or being. As 
such it could have but one single, continuous 
psychic state. It must have had one ethereal 



82 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

mind, so to speak, instead of an indefinite number 
of minds. But with the gradual differentiation 
of this one continuous body of ether (during the 
process of its formal evolution) into ions, atoms, 
molecules, cells, plants, animals, men, and socie- 
ties, there took place an evolution of minds and 
compounded minds, parallel and equivalent to the 
evolution of bodies and compounded bodies. The 
diffused, diluted, and attenuated sensibility of the 
ethereal world was gradually differentiated, con- 
centrated, and developed into higher, more com- 
plex and compound forms of consciousness until, 
after the lapse of millions of years, the present 
stage of mental development was reached. 

Every little corpuscle must have had its little 
corpuscular mind, or psychic state, differentiated 
out of the attenuated mind or psyche of the ether 
and existing in a more concentrated and intensi- 
fied form. Dr. Cams says they must be " little 
whirls and centers of subjectivity." The cor- 
puscles (and, in fact, all matter) are now known 
to be electrical in nature; and we all know that 
electricity displays attractive and repulsive incli- 
nations of the most pronounced and even, we might 
say, passionate character. Now, these passionate 
impulses, tendencies, and inclinations of the sub- 
microscopic electrical corpuscles must be consid- 
ered as sufficient evidence for the existence of 
psychical states and inclinations in these first and 
lowest forms of the differentiated ether of the 
world. These little corpuscular minds, so to 



EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL MINDS 83 

speak, could not be positively individual minds, 
but simply differential portions of the universal 
mind or psyche of the cosmic ether. These little 
corpuscles contain and display the first differen- 
tiated minds of the evolving world. At the next 
stage of evolution these little corpuscular bodies, 
with their little corpuscular minds, unite and clus- 
ter together to form the chemical atoms which, in 
their turn, in their manifestation of elective affinity 
and repulsion, or selective appetencies, show 
" every shade of inclination from complete indif- 
ference to the fiercest passion." So they must be 
credited with atomic minds of the simplest possible 
character, which are the combined and social 
minds of the electrical corpuscles of which they are 
composed. So the atomic mind must be a com- 
pound and social mind of the second degree of 
differentiation and order. 

At the next stage these atomic bodies with their 
atomic and social minds unite and cluster to form 
the molecular bodies and molecular minds. Then 
the molecular bodies and souls unite to form the 
crystalline bodies and minds. Prof. Haeckel says 
of these that " we find in crystallization, as in 
every chemical process, certain movements which 
are unintelligible without sensation, unconscious 
sensation of course." 

Next comes the large organic molecules, com- 
posed of many atomic bodies and souls. Then 
comes the living protoplasm, composed of many 
organic molecular bodies and minds, and in this 



84 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

primary matter of life we can visibly see the evi- 
dences of sensibility and mind in its irritability. 
" At the lowest stage of organic life," says Prof. 
Haeckel, " we find in all the protists those elemen- 
tary feelings of like and dislike, revealing them- 
selves in what are called their tropisms " in 
relation to light and darkness, warmth and cold, 
attractive and repulsive electricity, etc. ; and Max 
Verworn says, " The psychic phenomena of the 
protista form the bridge which unites the chemical 
processes of inorganic nature with the mental life 
of the highest animals." These unicellular pro- 
tozoa give proof of the possession of a highly 
developed cell-soul." Then comes the multicellu- 
lar organism, or metazoa, or cell-community, and 
of these Haeckel says, " In all these cenobia (or 
cell-colonies) we can easily distinguish two differ- 
ent grades of psychic activity. (1) The cell-souls 
of the individual cells, and (&) the communal soul 
of the entire colony." He says further concerning 
these primitive organisms, " In all the multicellular 
tissue forming plants (metaphyta), and in the 
lowest nerveless classes of tissue forming animals 
(metazoa), we have to distinguish two distinct 
forms of psychic activity, viz., (1) the psyche of 
the individual cells which compose the tissues, and 
(£) the psyche of the tissue itself, or of the cell- 
state which is made up of the tissues. This tis- 
sue-soul is the higher psychological function which 
gives physiological individuality to the compound 
multicellular organism, as a true cell-common- 



EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL MINDS 85 

wealth. It controls all the separate cell-souls of 
the social cells, the mutually dependent citizens 
which constitute the community. 

" This two-fold and fundamental character of 
the psyche of the metaphyta and of the nerveless 
and lower metazoa is very important. It may be 
verified by unprejudiced observation and suitable 
experiment. In the first place, each single cell has 
its own sensation and movement, and in addition 
each tissue and each organ composed of a number 
of homogeneous cells has its special irritability 
and psychic unity." From these lower forms of 
organic life, we pass on to the highest, including 
man. The same principles hold true of the higher 
animals and men as of the lower organisms. 
" Man's body is a cell-state, composed of millions 
of microscopic citizens, the individual cells, which 
work more or less independently therein, and co- 
operate for the common purpose of the entire 
community " — the, so-called, individual man, or 
person, or self. 

Prof. J. T. Merz says : " Every living organ- 
ism is a society of self-accommodating individual 
units or cells." Concerning the psychic character 
of these so-called individual persons Prof. Haeckel 
says : " Every living cell has its own psychic 
properties, and the psychic life of the multicellular 
animals (and men) is merely the sum-total of the 
psychic functions of the cells which build up their 
structure. 

" Just as we take the living cell to be the ele- 



86 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

mentary organism in anatomy and physiology, 
and derive the whole system of the multicellular 
animals or plants from it, so with equal right and 
necessity we may consider the cell-soul to be the 
psychological unit, and the complex psychic activ- 
ity of the higher organism to be the result of the 
combination of the psychic activities of the cells 
which compose it." 

Man's mind, therefore, is the compound, com- 
plex, and representative mind of the millions of 
cellular minds of which it is composed, and of 
which it is the cooperative result. Neither in 
body or in mind is man a single, simple, individual 
being. His body is a compound and social body, 
and his mind is a compound and social mind, re- 
sulting from the combination and cooperation of 
the millions of social and cellular minds possessed 
by the millions of social and cellular bodies of which 
his complex and compound body is composed. 
Man's body is a six times compounded differential 
of the body of the original ether, and his mind is 
likewise a six times compounded differential of the 
mind, or psychic state and condition, of the same. 
And neither in one aspect or the other can we dis- 
cover or discern the least trace or suggestion of 
simple, undivided individuality about him. Man 
is not, never was, and never will be, an absolute 
individual. His so-called individuality is a sheer 
illusion, and his selfhood is a blind and ignorant 
superstition, and it is high time it took its place 
in the museum of exploded fallacies with the flat 



EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL MINDS 87 

and motionless earth and the little, revolving sun. 
There is but one whole, uncompounded mind in 
the universe, and that is the mind of the Universe 
itself. The one, single mind of the original cos- 
mic ether is the only individual mind that exists ; 
and this single, individual mind of the Cosmos 
sub-divides and differentiates itself into the infinite 
number of finite and partial minds possessed by 
the infinite number of finite bodies and forms into 
which the one, single body of the Cosmos subdi- 
vides and differentiates itself. 

So the single, individual mind of the Universe 
becomes, through the process of its own self-evolu- 
tion, transformed into a multiple, multiform, and 
social mind, — into a society of minds, a society 
of souls, a society of selves and persons. Thus 
the Universe, which we have now called " God," 
becomes a social universe, and God becomes (in- 
stead of a solitary, lonely, and isolated being) a 
multiple, multiform, and social being, — a society 
of spirits, and a social God. 

A God who hides Himself 
Is never a God at all; 
For Spirit is Social Being, 
Or is not Spirit at all. 2 

" Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, 
And spirit with Spirit can meet; 
Nearer is He than breathing, 
And closer than hands and feet." 3 

28 

3 Tennyson. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE DYNAMIC NATURE OF THE MIND 

"The stream of consciousness." 

The scientific truth that man is not, and, in 
the nature of things, cannot be, a true individual 
in any real sense of the word is made still more 
manifest when we reflect upon the fact that the 
matter of which his body is composed at any given 
time is not stationary and fixed matter which 
comes into his bodily form and remains there per- 
manently in that form throughout his life, or even 
for any considerable time, but that it comes and 
goes again, with the nature and rapidity of an 
ever rushing and flowing stream; and that his 
body is just like a stream, waterfall, or gas flame. 

In all these cases the form of the body remains 
the same, but the matter composing the form is 
continually different. There is nothing individ- 
ual, or identically the same, about the stream, 
waterfall, or gas flame except its mere form and 
the likeness of the matter composing it. So there 
is nothing identically the same about a man's body 
except its mere shape and the similarity of the 
substances composing it. The substance comes 
and goes like the water in the river and fall, or 

the gas in the flame. 

88 



DYNAMIC NATURE OF MIND 89 

In fact, life is nothing chemically but a proc- 
ess of combustion, and scientists can compare it 
to nothing else so perfectly as to a flame. Thus 
Prof. Haeckel says that " of all the phenomena 
of inorganic nature with which the life process 
may be compared, none is so much like it exter- 
nally and internally as a flame. So Max Wer- 
worn says : " The comparison of life to a flame 
is particularly suitable for helping us to realize 
the relation between form and metabolism," or the 
biological movement, circulation, and metamor- 
phosis of matter into, and through, and out of the 
bodily form. " The study of the gas jet," he 
says, " gives us, even in detail, the features we find 
in the structure of the living cell," and of the liv- 
ing body. 

" The scientific soundness of this metaphor is 
all the more notable as the phrase 'the flame of 
life ' or ' the spark of life ' has long been famil- 
iar both in poetry and in popular parlance." 
Metabolism means the movement, the streaming, 
the never ending circulation, of the atoms of liv- 
ing matter into the body, and round and round 
through it, and then out of it again when inert, 
exhausted, and biologically dead and useless. 
" The body is like a stove, a human furnace," 
says " Steele's Chemistry," " in which fuel is 
burned, and the chemical action is precisely like 
that in any other stove. This combustion pro- 
duces heat, and our bodies are kept warm by the 
constant fire within us. We thus see why we for- 



90 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

tify ourselves against a cold day by a full meal. 
When there is plenty of fuel in our human fur- 
naces the oxygen, the great agent of all combus- 
tion, burns that; but if there is a deficiency, the 
destructive oxygen must still unite with something, 
and so it combines with the flesh ; first the fat, and 
the man grows poor and lean; then with the mus- 
cle, and he grows weak ; finally with the brain, and 
he becomes crazed. He has simply burned up as 
a candle burns out to darkness. . . . We thus 
dissolve and melt away in time, and only the 
shadow of our bodies can be called our own. They 
are like the flame of a lamp which appears for a 
long time the same, since it is ' ceaselessly fed as it 
ceaselessly melts away.' The rapidity of this 
change in our bodies is remarkable. Let a man 
abstain from food and water for only an hour, 
and the balance will prove he has become lighter. 
This activity of oxygen, so destructive and wast- 
ing us away constantly from birth to death, is 
yet essential to our very existence. And why is 
this? Here is the glorious paradox of life. We 
live only as we die." 

And the faster we die, — the faster the fuel and 
food of life is poured into our human furnaces, 
and is burned up and consumed, and passes on and 
out of our bodies into other forms of existence,- — 
the faster and more do we live. The moment we 
cease dying in this metabolic way, that moment 
do we cease to live and be conscious. So death, 
that is metabolic death, the death of the constitu- 



DYNAMIC NATURE OF MIND 91 

ent cells and tissues of the body as a whole, is not 
an event which takes place once in a lifetime; it 
is a constant and ceaseless process, as constant as 
life itself. Millions of the living cells, the citi- 
zens of that social cell-organism we call our in- 
dividual body, die every day. 

" No act can be performed except by the wear- 
ing away of muscle. No thought can be evolved 
except at the expense of the brain." And this 
brain of ours is the place of all places where the 
flame of life burns away the fastest, and where 
the light of life is the brightest. Here the stream 
pours through in a very torrent, and our brains 
and streams of consciousness are the least perma- 
nent and most transient portions of our whole be- 
ing. Our brain is a burning and consuming flame 
of cerebral substances and energies. Our sensa- 
tions, feelings, impulses, and thoughts flow like the 
torrents of a mountain stream, and so true is this 
fact that it has become an accepted commonplace 
among psychologists to refer to the mind as " the 
stream of consciousness." 

" All nature is a torrent of ceaseless change," 
says " Steele's Chemistry." " We are but parts 
of a grand system, and the elements we use are 
not our own," for these elements we now call our 
own have been used and used over again an in- 
finite number of times before, and will be used an 
infinite number of times again. " From us they 
will pass on their ceaseless round to develop new 
forms " of the universal cosmic life of the one and 



92 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

only integral Being of the world. The living cells 
stream through the human body, into it, round 
about it, and then out of it again, as the atoms 
of gas flow into and out of the gas flame ; and they 
do this most rapidly in that highest and most per- 
fect organ of the human body, viz., the brain; 
There, while undergoing a process of rapid dis- 
integration and of intense vibration and excita- 
tion, they become conscious and aware; and 
exhausting and spending themselves in this ef- 
fort, they rapidly pass on and out, and a new 
flood of cells take their vacated places and assume 
their abandoned forms, and so become conscious 
and aware in the selfsame ways and in the self- 
same forms. 

So it appears upon the surface of things and 
to our uncritical impressions as though it was the 
same identical brain and the same identical and 
individual consciousness which was there in that 
place and in that form of brain all the time, just 
as it appears upon the surface and to our shallow 
seeing eyes as though it was the same identical 
and individual gas jet which was burning all the 
time. But just as truly as it is not, in substance 
and in actual fact, the same gas jet which is con- 
tinually burning, but a different gas jet entirely 
in every respect except form and likeness of sub- 
stance, so it is not, in substance and in actual 
fact, the same identical brain and the same iden- 
tical mind which is permanently conscious and 
aware in our bodies. It is, on the contrary, a 



DYNAMIC NATURE OF MIND 93 

distinctly different brain and a distinctly different 
mind every day, hour, and moment of our lives. 
For mind, we must not forget, is not a separate 
existence, thing in itself, or entity of any kind at 
all, but only a certain peculiar state and char- 
acteristic condition which the substance and cells 
of the brain acquire as, streaming in and out of 
the brain-form, or cerebral flame, as we may 
justly call it, they momentarily undergo a process 
of intense excitation and vibration. In fact, the 
cerebral cells burn up and explode, and in this 
momentary act of combustion, explosion, and dis- 
integration, they become conscious and aware, and 
then pass on and out, while others, just exactly 
like themselves in substance and shape, take their 
vacated places and assume their abandoned forms ; 
and so on, till sleep or death puts a temporary 
or complete end to this dynamic process, and the 
consciousness or mind goes out in darkness just 
as the light does, and for the same reason. 

The mind of to-day is not at all the one of yes- 
terday any more than the flame or waterfall of 
to-day is the one of yesterday. The one is just 
as new and different as the others. The mind of 
to-day, like the flame of to-day, is simply the di- 
rect heir and successor, and the lineal descendant 
and child, of the mind of yesterday. It simply 
inherits the shape, character, and qualities of its 
parent mind and predecessor with all its records, 
or so-called memories, which make it appear and 
feel as though it was the selfsame mind all the 



94 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

time, whereas it is nothing of the kind. It is an 
entirely different mind, although, through its in- 
heritance of the same form and character, and the 
past records, or so-called memories, of its pre- 
decessor, it acquires the impression that it is the 
same. We have the impression that the earth is 
flat and motionless, and men for thousands of 
years believed it was so. So we have the impres- 
sion that our minds and ourselves are the same 
minds and " selves " we were born with ; but this 
latter impression in regard to our " selves " is 
just as untrue and unscientific as the former im- 
pression in regard to the shape and movement of 
the earth. And just as science has destroyed 
the first illusion, so it will before long destroy the 
last. 

Man has no permanent mind or " self " what- 
ever. Our minds and our " selves " are born 
anew every moment of our lives, and our so-called 
personality at any given moment is simply the 
heir and successor to an indefinite number of simi- 
lar personalities, equally transient in character, 
which have gone before us in our particular form 
and character. Birth in its metabolic meaning, 
like death in the same sense, is not an event which 
occurs once in a lifetime. On the contrary, it 
is a continual and endless process. It is a cease- 
less event and is taking place at all times, and 
most rapidly when we are most alive and most 
conscious. Both bodily and mentally, both in 
substance and in states of substance, we are be- 



DYNAMIC NATURE OF MIND 95 

ing born anew at every passing moment of time. 
Metabolic birth and death are the incoming and 
outgoing aspects of the selfsame and ceaseless 
process which is going on everywhere throughout 
all nature and throughout all space and time. We, 
in a true sense, were not born once and only once, 
neither will we die once and only once. We are 
being born anew with every breath we draw, and 
dying anew with every breath we exhale. Birth 
and death is an unbroken and continuous process, 
and not, in reality, a solitary event. We are al- 
ways dying and always being born at every 
microscopic movement of time. The mind or 
" self " is the momentarily illuminated portion of 
a rapidly rushing stream of universal being which 
comes silently and invisibly out of the darkness 
before, and passes silently and invisibly into the 
darkness behind. But something is permanent, 
and what is it if it is not the flowing ego of the 
present moment? The answer is, — it is that uni- 
versal and unitary body and ocean of being which 
flows throughout all space and endures throughout 
all time; which flows here and there and every- 
where, through all things, all beings, and all cos- 
mic forms ; which, " without haste and without 
rest," stops and remains nowhere permanently, 
in any place, or any being, or any form. 

It is the universal Ego, the cosmic Mind which 
alone is permanent, which alone is identical, and 
which alone is a permanent and immortal self, 
individual, and person. It passes and repasses 



96 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

like an electric stream of energy ; and through the 
perfect, unbroken, and indivisible unity of its own 
cosmic Body and Soul, it binds and holds all its 
transitory and ephemeral forms into a perfect cos- 
mic and organic oneness. Our minds are its 
minds as our bodies are its bodies, and our joys 
and pains are its very own. Our memories, too, 
as we call them, are, in reality, its memories, and 
not at all our personal own. In the partial and 
personal meaning of the word, the " I " of to-day 
is a distinctly different " I " from the " I " of 
yesterday; but in the integral and cosmic sense 
of the word, the " I " of to-day is the selfsame 
and continuous " I " as the " I " of yesterday ; 
for all " I's " are its " I's." 

The man or fractional being of to-day is not 
the man or partial being of yesterday; but the 
God or whole Being of to-day is the God or whole 
Being of yesterday, and of eternity. And so we 
regain the fractional ego we have humanly lost 
in the integral and cosmic Ego we have divinely 
won. But in this integral and universal sense 
our one, whole, and divine Ego is not our own 
exclusively, but it is ours only in common and 
publicly with all other men, and all other crea- 
tures, and all other things. In God, all things, 
and creatures, and men are One. Here, in the 
little circumscribed light of the human conscious- 
ness, " I " seem to be " I," and " you " seem to 
be " you " ; but out there in the surrounding dark, 
where only the powerful light of science and 



DYNAMIC NATURE OF MIND 97 

philosophy can penetrate, you and I and God are 
one. It is only in this whole, universal, and di- 
vine sense that anything whatever is true and real. 
In the partial, local, and human sense everything 
is false and illusory. Thus in the partial and 
human sense the man and mind of to-day is not 
the man and mind of yesterday ; but in the whole 
and divine sense, which, in the last resort, is the 
only true sense, the man of to-day is the same 
as the man of yesterday, but only because they 
were both the passing portions of the one and uni- 
versal Whole. 

It is only in God, and through God, that the 
man of to-day is the man of yesterday and the 
man of to-morrow. In any private and exclusive 
sense he is not the same man at all. We retain 
our human individuality only through the univer- 
sal and divine individuality of God. It is the con- 
tinuous, indivisible unity and wholeness of God 
which gives us all the finite and human individual- 
ity we possess. The world in reality has but one 
whole inhabitant, and the entire population of 
the universe is One. The apparent multiplicity 
of beings and things is a shallow illusion, for these 
multitudinous forms are merely its myriads of 
members and minds. The life of the universe is 
one life, and it is all of it the life of God. Its 
struggles, and battles, defeats and victories, are 
God's. Its sins and sorrows, its joys and pains 
are His. It is God's life, every atom of it, and 
not our little own merely. 



98 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

" The long passion of our humanity," says 
Prof. Carpenter, " is borne in all its multitudinous 
variety by Him." " God's life is simply all life," 
says Prof. Royce. " What is this life indeed but 
the pastime of the divine Life itself? " The life 
on this earth of ours is only one of the divine 
dramas which God himself is playing on all the 
planetary stages of the universe. He, too, is play- 
ing all the parts at the same time, from the mean- 
est and most ignoble to the proudest and most 
sublime, — from the worm to the man, from the 
murderer to the saint, from the long-suffering 
poor to the pleasure-chasing rich. 

The suffering masses of humanity are the 
masses and bulk of God's own body and God's 
own soul. Man's inhumanity to man is man's 
inhumanity to God and not to any other being 
or beings, for there is no other being and there 
are no other beings. It is God himself, therefore, 
who is made to weep and mourn. " It is just 
this thought of the suffering God," says Prof. 
Royce, " who is just our own true self, who actu- 
ally and in our flesh bears the sins of the world 
and whose natural body is pierced by the capri- 
cious wounds which hateful fools inflict upon him. 
God is not," he says, " in his ultimate essence 
another being than yourself. He is the absolute 
being. You are truly one with God and part of 
his life. He is the very soul of your soul." Bone 
of your bone, and flesh of your flesh. " When 
you suffer, your sufferings are God's sufferings. 



DYNAMIC NATURE OF MIND 99 

In you God himself suffers precisely as you do. 
There is in the universe but one perfectly real 
being." 

" Know thyself," was the profoundest injunc- 
tion of the philosophers of Greece, and when you 
know yourself, says the monistic philosopher of 
to-day, you shall know that you are God. 

" One undivided Soul of many a soul, 
Whose nature is its own divine control, 
Where all things flow to all, as rivers to the 
sea." 

So the philosophy of monism becomes a doc- 
trine of a divine universe, a divine humanity, and 
a human Divinity; and the religion of monism 
preaches an " enthusiasm of humanity " which is 
also, at the same time, an enthusiasm of Divinity, 
an enthusiasm of God, as the one, all-inclusive, and 
only real Being in the world. 

..." For I have learned 
To look on Nature, not as in the hour 
Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes 
The still, sad music of humanity, 
Nor harsh, nor grating, though of ample power 
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt 
A Presence that disturbs me with a joy 
Of elevated thoughts, a sense sublime 
Of something far more subtly interfused, 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean, and the living air, 



100 THE GOB WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

And the blue sky, and, in the mind of man, 
A motion and a spirit that impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thoughts, 
And rolls through all things." x 



i Wordsworth. 



CHAPTER IX 
THE ILLUSION OF MEMORY 

One of the peculiar and universal powers pos- 
sessed by all living organisms is that of taking in 
outside matter and building it up into a form pre- 
cisely like that of the living organism itself. Thus 
the organism consumes food, which is digested, or 
rendered fit for conversion into tissues ; it is taken 
up into the circulating blood, carried to all the 
wasting cells and tissues of the body, and each 
cell and tissue seizes this converted food and molds 
it into a form precisely like itself. So the old, 
wasted, and inert cell and tissue is repaired, re- 
produced, and reduplicated by the newly formed 
cell and tissue under this formative and repro- 
ductive power possessed by all living matter. 

" All biological repair," says Herbert Spencer, 
" is carried on by the old cells of tissues forming 
out of raw organic matter new cells just like them- 
selves." This power of assimilating (or making 
similar), of reproducing and reduplicating the 
old cells in the formation of new ones is a power 
possessed by all living and organic matter. It is 
manifested in many wonderful and mysterious 

ways, and is called " physiological polarity " or 

101 



102 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

the " repetition of predecessors " by Herbert 
Spencer. This power is possessed, in the last 
analysis, by the ultimate vital elements, or 
" physiological units," of which every living organ- 
ism is composed. Each living organism is com- 
posed of ultimate vital elements, or " units," 
peculiar to its own individual organism, and all 
such individual and specific units have the power 
of molding the fit raw materials of organic life 
with which they come in contact into individual 
and specific units precisely like themselves, making 
due allowance here, however, for the action of the 
laws of variation, which are due undoubtedly to 
some change in the environing condition. 

Living cells of all kinds take in fit organic 
matter from without, mold this matter into a form 
and character like themselves, grow and expand, 
then divide into % or 4 parts or new cells, which 
each repeat this process indefinitely. This is 
called reproduction by cleavage. This reproduc- 
tive power is displayed in many curious and won- 
derful ways among the lower and most primitive 
organisms. Thus in the Hydrozoa any part of 
the body, if cut off from the rest, will reproduce 
a whole new body if furnished with the raw ma- 
terials. In the Actinozoa a half of a body will 
reproduce a new and whole one. An annelid may 
be cut into 30 or 40 pieces, and each piece will 
grow and reproduce a whole one. Lobsters and 
crabs will restore lost claws which have been torn 
off in battle. Lizards can restore and reproduce 



THE ILLUSION OF MEMORY 103 

lost limbs or lost tails. Fifty polypes were re- 
produced from one which was cut up into that 
many pieces. A piece of begonia leaf will repro- 
duce 100 new plants. 

In the function of sexual reproduction the same 
principle is an action. A little cell, or rather two 
of them, a male and female in conjunction, con- 
taining within themselves a number of these specific 
physiological units of which all organisms are 
composed, begin to take in outside matter, to grow 
and develop into the completed form of the dual 
parental organism through the continual molding 
of this matter into units like themselves, and with 
the same organic polarities, — polarities which can 
only find their equilibrium and satisfy their in- 
trinsic qualities and impulses in the construction 
and reproduction of an organic form just, or very 
nearly, like the originals of the parents. In sex- 
ual reproduction there is considerable variation, 
and that is the very reason, perhaps, why sexual 
reproduction exists. In the other, or the merely 
restorative and reparative, forms of reproduction, 
there is very little or no variation whatever. In 
sexual reproduction a microscopic part of ex- 
truded cell from the organism reproduces the whole 
organism in duplicate. In restorative reproduc- 
tion, as where a lobster reproduces a lost claw, the 
whole organism reproduces a part. In reparative 
reproduction, as where worn-out cells or tissues 
reproduce new ones, a whole reproduces a whole 
or a part reproduces a part. But these are all 



104 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

simply different manifestations of the action of one 
common principle and power of reproduction pos- 
sessed by all living matter. 

Now, this power of reproduction, repetition, 
imitation, and heredity possessed by all living mat- 
ter has a most vital bearing on the question of 
the finite individuality of man. We have already 
seen that the organism is nothing but a rapidly 
flowing stream of cells, and the only way in which 
the organism can possibly maintain the same kind 
of a form from one day to another is through this 
universal organic power it has of taking in new 
raw material and of molding it into a form pre- 
cisely like the old one, so that when the old, worn- 
out, and exhausted cells and tissues pass on and 
out of the body, as they are continually doing, the 
new ones take their vacated places and step, so to 
speak, into their shoes. 

The form, character, and qualities of the new 
body and organism, composed and constituted of 
the new cells and tissues, will be precisely (or al- 
most precisely) like the old one. It will be in 
every respect a practically perfect copy and re- 
production of the old body, so much so that to all 
superficial observation and knowledge it will ap- 
pear and seem to be the same ; which, of course, in 
this flowing reproducing nature of things it can- 
not be. 

The new body is merely a perfect duplicate of 
the old one and is its immediate successor, direct 
descendant, and lineal heir. The organism of to- 



THE ILLUSION OF MEMORY 105 

day, both as regards its body and its mind, is sim- 
ply the heir and successor to the organism of 
yesterday, or a very short time ago. The body 
of to-day is nothing but the heir and successor 
to the body of yesterday, and the mind of to-day 
is likewise nothing but the heir and successor to 
the mind of yesterday in spite of any feelings, 
impressions, and memories to the contrary. 
There is no part of the organism where the stream 
of life and blood, of substance and energy, flows 
so fast as it does through the brain; where the 
old cells flow out and the new cells flow in as fast 
as they do here; nor where the reproduction of 
new cells by the old cells takes place so rapidly 
as it does in the brain, so that a brand-new brain 
is constantly taking the place of the old and ex- 
hausted one. And not only does the new brain 
take the place of the old one, but it also takes 
the precise form and character of the old in 
accordance with the universal biological law of 
reproduction, repetition, and heredity. And as 
a brand-new brain is continually taking the place 
and the precise form and character of the old one, 
so, of necessity, a brand new brain state of con- 
sciousness is continually taking the place, precise 
form, and character of the old one that has now 
passed into history as a bygone memory. 

So the brain state of to-day is an entirely new 
and different one from that of yesterday, and is 
nothing but its immediate successor, direct heir, 
and lineal descendant. In other words, the indi- 



106 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

vidual of to-day is merely the heir and successor 
to the individual of yesterday ; and no living being 
has any private and exclusive personality at all, 
either as regards his body or his soul, his sub- 
stance or his spirit. But surely we remember to 
have lived in the past, and surely our memory is 
a proof of our continued and permanent existence. 
No, we are completely mistaken in this regard ; our 
memory does not tell us the truth in this matter, 
any more than our eyes tell us the truth in regard 
to the roundness, rotation, and revolution of the 
earth. Our memories and personal impressions 
deceive us completely in regard to ourselves. The 
truth in regard to ourselves is the very reverse of 
what our memories and impressions seem to tell 
us. Our so-called memories are not, in fact, 
" our " memories at all. They are the recorded 
memories of our predecessors, in the " form " we 
now exist in. We have simply stepped into " dead 
men's shoes," inherited their psychological remains 
and mental accumulations ; and having done this, 
we fondly imagine that we are them ; but they have 
gone, and we are merely their psychical succes- 
sors. 

The impression of a permanent personality is 
derived entirely from the function of memory. If 
we could not remember from one moment to an- 
other what had happened in the preceding moment, 
we could never acquire the sense or impression of 
a permanent something or person which persisted 
from moment to moment and whose consecutive 



THE ILLUSION OF MEMORY 107 

experiences these momentary states were. While 
being conscious of the present moment, we must 
also retain a consciousness of some kind of the 
past or preceding moments, and this consciousness 
of the past and preceding moments must depend 
upon some more or less lasting impression and 
record being made upon the consciousness, and 
this in turn means that some more or less lasting 
impression and record must have been made upon 
the cells of the brain. It is the consciousness of 
these lasting impressions and records made upon 
the brain cells, which constitutes memory. 

Now, how is memory for any considerable length 
of time made possible, if, as we have shown, there 
is a constant and rapid procession of old brain- 
cells going out and new ones coming in? The 
answer is that this memory, or lasting impression 
and record of past and preceding experiences, is 
made possible through the constant reproduction 
of new brain-cells and tissues (in accordance with 
the universal biological law of reproduction and 
" repetition of predecessors "), having perfect re- 
productions, duplicates, and copies of the impres- 
sions and records made originally upon the old 
brain-cells and experienced originally by them, 
and not by their heirs and immediate or remote 
successors in the brain. The new brain-cells ac- 
quire (through this law of reproduction and repe- 
tition, of duplication and reduplication) the same 
memorial impressions and records as the old and 
original ones. And so it appears upon the surface 



108 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

that they remember, recollect, or recall those past 
experiences in consciousness which as an actual, 
literal fact happened, not to them at all, but to 
their old, dead, and now departed predecessors in 
that particular brain-form. 

The brain, in fact, is like a photographic, 
phonographic, and psychographic machine in 
which impressions and records are made in the old 
cells and then copied and duplicated in the new 
ones, the new cells taking the places and " step- 
ping into the shoes " of the old cells after they 
are worn out and passed out of the brain. " Con- 
sciousness," says Prof. Jacques Loeb, " is the func- 
tion of a machine which we will call the associative 
memory, and which is like a phonograph repro- 
ducing impressions in a chronological order." So 
Dr. Paul Carus says, " The preservation and 
transmission of form is the physiological condition 
of memory. If certain changes which take place 
in living substance are accompanied by sensation, 
the preservation of certain physiological forms 
produced by such changes will preserve the corre- 
sponding sensations also. They are registered in 
the protoplasm similarly as speech is recorded in 
the trefoil of the phonograph. 

" If the physiological forms of sentient matter 
are called into activity by some stimulus, it will 
reproduce in weaker form the corresponding sen- 
sation just as a phonograph will reproduce 
speech.* 9 

In this reproductive and restimulative way the 



THE ILLUSION OF MEMORY 109 

new brain appears to be the old brain, the new 
consciousness appears to be the old consciousness, 
and the new person and self seems to be the same 
old person and the same old self; but in each and 
every instance this appearance is most false and 
illusory. As a photographer takes one picture 
and from that reproduces and copies many others 
like it; and as a phonographer takes one master 
record of a piece of music and from that repro- 
duces many others precisely like it, so the brain, 
which is an automatic psycho-graphic machine, 
takes, in the present cells of the brain, records 
and impressions of the various sights, sounds, and 
experiences of life and from these original rec- 
ords and impressions, in the original brain-cells 
which experienced and made them, it reproduces, 
in time, many new ones to take the places of the 
old and worn out ones of the old, worn out and 
departed cells of the old, worn out and departed 
brain. 

So in this reproductive and metabolic way the 
new and present consciousness is made to appear 
upon the surface of things as though it was really 
the old and departed consciousness ; and the new 
and present individual is made to seem like the 
old, departed, and vanished individual. But as a 
matter of scientific fact this impression and ap- 
pearance of a permanent individual is all an illu- 
sion. Like the photographic and phonographic 
duplicates and copies, a man is merely a psycho- 
graphic copy and duplicate of an old, past, and 



110 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

vanished man. This is how behind the scenes, and 
in the psychographic laboratory of the brain, the 
impression and appearance of a permanent human 
ego is produced; and this is how we are cheated 
and deceived into the belief and conviction of a 
permanent consciousness and personality. 

This is the way in which we acquire the illusion 
of individuality and the superstition of the pri- 
vate and exclusive self. This process might truly 
be characterized as the process of psychic repro- 
duction and heredity, for in this process the mind 
is reproduced continually in a permanent and un- 
broken series until death puts an end to the proc- 
ess. There is thus, we see, no permanent smgle 
self or soul, but there is instead a continuous and 
permanent series of souls in every living and hu- 
man form. And this series of souls is a part and 
fraction of the entire cosmic soul of the one and 
only Being of the world. 

Psychologists characterize the mind as " the 
stream of consciousness " and as a series of con- 
scious states ; and this agrees with this view of the 
mind as a series of minds. The stream of mind is 
not perfectly continuous; it is broken nightly by 
sleep, and occasionally by this and other events, 
the stream of consciousness becomes discon- 
tinuous. Hence we may regard, if we will, the 
" stream of mind " as a stream of minds, more or 
less separated and distinct in space and time and 
in substantial bases from each other. The indi- 
vidual streams of mind are infinitely numerous, 



THE ILLUSION OF MEMORY 111 

and they are all the streams and currents of one 
all-inclusive ocean of mind which fills all space and 
endures throughout all time; and this infinite and 
eternal ocean of mind we have the right to call the 
mind of God. 



CHAPTER X 

THE COSMIC EGO 

" What I call God, 
And fools call Nature." 

Browning. 

Is man's original and naive belief in a permanent 
individual and self a complete and unqualified il- 
lusion in every possible sense of the word? Is it 
not true in some sense and in some way? Have 
we human beings no individuality and selfhood 
whatever and of any kind? That is not neces- 
sarily the conclusion to be drawn from the pre- 
ceding argument, I believe. What that argument 
and evidence proves is that we have no truly pri- 
vate and exclusive individuality and selfhood, and 
that such individuality and selfhood does not ex- 
ist. It asserts that such individuality is an 
illusion and a superstition ; but as a complementary 
proposition it necessarily implies that there is an 
infinite and eternal, a universal and all-inclusive, 
Individual and Self, in whose perfect and complete 
individuality and selfhood we all equally partici- 
pate and democratically share in common. 

From the narrower, partial, and pluralistic 

point of view it is not the same stream which flows 

112 



THE COSMIC EGO 113 

by our doors every day and every hour, but from 
the broader, integral, organic, and monistic point 
of view it may be regarded as the same, because 
all being is one continuous, individual, cosmic, and 
divine organism. 

So from the fractional and pluralistic point of 
view, it is not the same identical individual who 
appears in our human form from day to day and 
from year to year, because of this universal fact 
of the ceaseless flow of matter and its mental 
states. But from the integral, monistic, and or- 
ganic point of view it is always the selfsame, con- 
tinuous, indivisible, and universal being which is 
conscious in us to-day, and yesterday, and to- 
morrow, and which flows through us at all times. 
We retain or regain our individuality, therefore, 
because of the fact that the whole world of being 
is absolutely indivisible and perfectly continuous. 
It cannot lose its perfect, absolute, and funda- 
mental unity under any circumstances and vicis- 
situdes whatever. 

But this individuality which we so retain is a 
universal, infinite, and eternal individuality, in 
which we participate and share in common and 
publicly with all other men and creatures and 
things equally. It is an infinite, universal, and 
all-inclusive individuality, not a finite, all-exclu- 
sive, and positively private one. We are individ- 
uals and selves because we are bona fide portions, 
inseparable and continuous, with the indivisible 
Body and Soul of the world. We are the genuine 



114 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

members of God's own body, the bona fide organs 
of God's own organism, and the necessary func- 
tions of God's own mind. It is God who in his 
indivisible unity and organic wholeness is conscious 
in us to-day, yesterday, and to-morrow. We are 
Him and He is us. He is permanent and eternal, 
and we, as bona fide portions and functions of his 
eternal body and mind, participate and share in 
his permanence and eternity. He is a perfect 
and absolute Individual, and in his perfect and 
absolute individuality we have a genuine and equal 
share. He is, as the poet says: 

" One undivided Soul, of many a soul ' 

Whose nature is its own divine Control, 
Where all things flow to All, as rivers to the sea." 

" Constantly picture the universe as a living organ- 
ism, controlling a single substance and a single soul, 
and note how all things are assimilated to a single 
world-sense. All act together by a single impulse, 
and all cooperate towards all that comes to pass." 1 



i Marcus Aurelws. 



CHAPTER XI 
THE SOCIAL EGO 

A solitary conscious being without conscious 
companions like itself, if such a being were log- 
ically and naturally possible, would be a most for- 
lorn, unhappy, and accursed being. Consciousness 
in an absolutely solitary form would be a curse 
instead of a blessing to its possessor, if such a 
thing were actually possible or conceivable, which 
I do not believe. 

Some one has spoken of " the awful loneliness of 
God," God being imagined as a single, " sui gen- 
eris," conscious being, existing all alone by himself 
prior to his imagined creation of the world, and 
still so far above and removed from it that he 
must exist in a state of transcendent and awful 
loneliness. In the same way it is sometimes as- 
sumed that men of exalted genius, who stand high 
above their ordinary fellowmen, suffer from a feel- 
ing of great loneliness because they cannot be on 
terms of the fullest fellowship and companionship 
with them. 

We get further proof of the undesirability and 

abnormality of consciousness in a solitary form 

in the insanity and melancholy which so uniformly 

116 



116 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

besets prisoners in solitary confinement, the keep- 
ers of lonely and isolated lighthouses, and the 
isolated wives of farmers on sparsely settled prai- 
ries. The Bible says, " It is not good for man to 
be alone," and if we take this to mean a conscious 
being of any kind, then it expresses a profound 
psychological and spiritual truth. It is not good, 
or natural, for any conscious being to exist in 
solitude, separation, or independent of conscious 
companions like itself. It is not good, desirable, 
or normal for conscious beings to be unsocial or 
unsociable. The conscious being is essentially a 
social and sociable being, and deprived of all con- 
scious companions like itself, its existence would 
be most miserable and unblest. Think of the im- 
aginary God of dualistic and supernatural the- 
ology existing all alone from all eternity prior to 
his assumed creation of the world and man. Think 
of the " Ancient Mariner," 

" Alone, alone, all, all, alone ; 
Alone on a wide, wide sea. 
And never a saint took pity on 
My soul in agony." x 

Think of Crusoe, marooned upon his island in 
the sea, if he had not found a single human, ani- 
mal, and conscious companion, and then we can 
easily realize how abnormal, impossible, and un- 
desirable it would be for a conscious being to exist 
in solitary separation and independence of fellow 
minds like its own. 
i Coleridge. 



THE SOCIAL EGO 117 

A conscious being apart from other conscious 
beings would be out of its natural element and 
normal environment just as surely as a fish would 
be out of water. A single mind apart from a so- 
ciety of minds would be an abnormality and im- 
possibility. A mind always implies a society of 
minds, and cannot be conceived to exist in isolation 
and independence. It is never a whole and self- 
sufficient thing in itself alone, but is always a part 
of a larger and truer whole of which it is a func- 
tion. A mind always implies mmds, always im- 
plies a plurality and multiplicity of conscious 
beings. That is, it always implies a spiritual or 
psychic organism, a society of minds of which 
psychic organism the single, individual mind is an 
organ, function, and member. A single mind is 
never a psychic organism in itself alone, but is 
merely an atomic element and constituent of a 
compound psychic organism, — a social mind or 
society of minds. Mind is made and adapted for 
mind, for a mental and social environment; and 
this mental and social environment of the single 
mind constitutes the true psychic organism of 
which the single mind is an atomic element and 
constituent. 

Consciousness existing under a single, solitary, 
separate, and independent form, would be con- 
sciousness existing (if it could so exist) under its 
most undesirable, repulsive, and unideal form. 
But consciousness existing under a multiple, mul- 
tiform, and social form would be consciousness 



118 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

existing under its most desirable, attractive, nat- 
ural, and ideal form; and that is the form under 
which we do find that the consciousness of the uni- 
verse exists. The consciousness of the world ought 
not to be a single, solitary, separate, or individual 
consciousness. It ought to be, on the contrary, a 
multiple, multiform, collective, and social con- 
sciousness ; and that is what we find it to be. The 
conscious life of the universe is, as it ought to be, 
a social life. The consciousness of the world is, 
as it ought to be, a social and collective conscious- 
ness. The mind of the cosmos is, as it ought to 
be, a universal and social mind. The spirit of the 
world is not, as it ought not to be, a solitary and 
unsocial spirit. It is, as it ought to be, a social 
spirit, a society of spirits, a society of minds, a 
society of selves ; and it is this society of minds 
which constitutes the spiritual and psychic organ- 
ism of the world, — the psycho-zoon, the world- 
spirit, of which each single, individual mind is an 
atomic constituent and element. So the Person- 
ality of the world is not a solitary personality, 
but a social personality and a world-personality. 
So the true self of the world is not a solitary self, 
but a social self and a world-self; and the God of 
the world is not a solitary god, but a social god; 
— a world-deity, a divine society. 

We thus see that the conscious and spiritual 
being of the world ought not to exist, and does 
not exist, except under a multiple, multiform, sub- 
divided, and social form. It now remains to be 



THE SOCIAL EGO 119 

shown that, in the very nature of consciousness 
and intelligence itself, it cannot exist except under 
just such a form. 

The conscious life of the world as a whole is its 
own internal life. It can live only within itself 
and for itself. It cannot live in relation to any- 
thing or any being external to itself or for the 
sake of any being external to itself, for there is 
no being external to itself. It cannot, therefore, 
have a consciousness of anything external to it- 
self, or need any intelligence of any kind or degree, 
in order to adapt and adjust itself to anything 
or to any being outside. It can have no use or 
application for any external consciousness or any 
external intelligence. If it has any consciousness 
or intelligence at all, it must be a consciousness of 
its own internal world of being and an intelligence 
enabling its conscious portions to adapt and ad- 
just themselves to the unconscious or less con- 
scious portions, and to each other, to the best of 
their ability. Consciousness and intelligence, 
therefore, if they exist at all within the being of 
the world, must be internal in character and func- 
tion. It must be an internal or inner conscious- 
ness, an interior and inner intelligence, an inner 
light, an immanent reason, exclusively for internal 
use, illumination, and adjustment. 

The only kind of consciousness, intelligence, or 
knowledge the world can have is internal self-con- 
sciousness, interior self -intelligence, and immanent 
self-knowledge. But there can be no conscious- 



120 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

ness unless some subject is conscious of some ob- 
ject which is relatively and comparatively exterior 
to itself. Hence there can be no consciousness un- 
less the Being of the world as a whole divides itself 
phenomenally and superficially into subjective 
parts and organs that know, and into objective 
parts and structures that are known. The Being 
of the world, if it would be conscious and self- 
conscious, must perform an act of phenomenal 
and superficial self-division, self-partition, and 
self-cleavage. It must mother itself as a parent 
body and mind into filial parts. It must set itself 
up over against and opposite itself, '* vis-a-vis," 
in order that it may see and know itself, appear to 
itself, or manifest itself to itself ; and in order that 
it may do anything or realize any object. It must 
divide and separate a part of itself from another 
part of itself. It must distinguish this part from 
that in order that it may know and recognize it. 
It must differentiate one part from another in 
order that each separate part may perform its 
own function and play its own appointed part. 

It must perform the acts of self-cleavage, self- 
distinguishment, and self-differentiation. It must 
transform its undivided, undifferentiated, and un- 
distinguished body into a divided, distinguished, 
and differentiated world of knowing subjects, and 
knowable and known objects. It must set brother 
part against brother part of itself, in opposition, 
competition, and complementation. It must 
transform itself into a world of acting and react- 



THE SOCIAL EGO 121 

ing, attracting and repelling, energies and bodies. 
It must disorganize and divide itself into atomic 
multiplicity in order that it may later on reorgan- 
ize and reunite itself on a higher and nobler plane 
of existence. It must fall into material diversity 
and discord in order that it may later on rise to 
a spiritual and social unity and harmony. 

It must do all of these things if it would be 
conscious and self-conscious. An absolutely sim- 
ple, undivided, undifferentiated, undistinguished, 
uncomplicated unit of being cannot by any pos- 
sibility be conscious and self-conscious. Only a 
complicated, self-divided, self -differentiated, self- 
distinguished unit of being can ever be, or can 
ever become, via evolution, a conscious and self- 
conscious being. Only a perfect unit of being 
which has transformed its undivided, undifferen- 
tiated, and undistinguished body and self into a 
much divided, much differentiated, and much 
distinguished body and self, can ever be, or can 
ever become, via evolution, a conscious and self- 
conscious being. Only a perfect unit of being 
which has transformed itself into a world of many 
social subjects and many material objects, which 
has transformed its perfect simplicity and uni- 
formity into a multiform, multiple, and associated 
world of beings and things, can ever be, or can 
ever become, conscious and self-conscious. 

Only in such a complicated, multiform, and as- 
sociated world of beings and things can conscious- 
ness originate and be preserved and further 



im THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

developed to higher and ever higher and more self- 
conscious forms. Consciousness cannot exist or 
be evolved in an absolutely simple, uniform, and 
uncomplicated world of being; it can only exist 
and be evolved in a highly complicate, multiform, 
and much divided world of being. And as con- 
sciousness cannot exist in a simple, undivided 
world, neither can it exist itself in a simple and 
undivided form. 

As it can only exist in a complicated, multiform, 
and associated world of being, so it can only ex- 
ist itself in a multiple, multiform, and social form. 
A simple, single, and solitary consciousness of any 
kind is an utter impossibility in the nature of 
things. Only a multiform, multiple, and social 
consciousness is either possible or conceivable. 
The only possible or conceivable form of conscious- 
ness is the social form. The only possible mind 
that can exist or be evolved is the social Mind. 
An individual mind by itself is an utter impossibil- 
ity. So, therefore, an individual soul or self is an 
utter impossibility. These forms can only exist 
as the atomic elements and constituents of the so- 
cial Soul, the social Self, and the social God. 

In order that it may be conscious and self-con- 
scious, the Being of the world must divide itself 
within itself, into two dualistic portions ; manifest 
itself to itself in two dualistic ways; and appear 
to itself under two dualistic aspects, — the sub- 
jective and the objective. But this dualistic di- 
vision of the world of being is not sufficient for the 



THE SOCIAL EGO 123 

origination, preservation, and evolution of con- 
sciousness. A single subject with a single object 
is impossible in the nature of consciousness. Con- 
sciousness is always, of necessity, a consciousness 
of changes in the objective environment, and these 
changes must be continually taking place, or else 
consciousness cannot be maintained or developed. 
" To be conscious of the same thing continu- 
ally," says one high authority in psychology, 
" would mean to be conscious of nothing at all." 
And another says, " that a completely uniform 
condition of consciousness would prevent or arrest 
consciousness altogether." Consciousness cannot 
exist apart from changes in the objective environ- 
ment, and a single object could furnish no true or 
sufficient environment, or objective world, for a 
conscious being. Consciousness cannot exist, 
originate, be maintained, or be evolved unless there 
exists for the conscious subject a large and varied 
field, a world of many and various objects, and a 
multiplicity and multiformity of things for the 
exercise of discrimination, recognition, assimila- 
tion, etc., — in short, for the orderly organization 
within consciousness itself of a continually chang- 
ing experience. Unless there exist the conditions 
of continual objective changes, of continual dif- 
ferences and agreements, of likeness and unlike- 
ness, — not between a few objects, but between 
many and various ones, — consciousness cannot 
originate, be maintained, or be evolved into higher 
forms. The mind must have, in order to exist at 



124 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

all, not one object, nor a few objects, but a world 
of many and various objects; and the possibilities 
of consciousness, intelligence, and knowledge in- 
crease in proportion to the multiplicity and multi- 
formity of objects in the environment. 

The more highly the objective world is divided 
and differentiated into a multitude of multiform 
parts, the more highly may the mind and intelli- 
gence be developed, and the more easily may be it 
be originated and maintained. An undivided, un- 
differentiated world of being cannot be conscious 
or self-conscious at all; neither can a little divided 
and differentiated world of being; only a much 
divided and highly differentiated world of being 
can originate, preserve, and evolve conscious and 
self-conscious forms of life. 

We have now seen the necessity for a multiplic- 
ity of objects in order that consciousness and self- 
consciousness may exist. We must now show the 
equal necessity for a multiplicity of subjects, for 
a world of fellow-minds, for a community and so- 
ciety of intelligences, if consciousness and self-con- 
sciousness are to exist within the Being of the 
world. 

The mind needs to receive impressions and 
stimuli from the world of objects in order that 
it may become awake and aware. It equally needs 
to give expression, utterance, and voice to the 
thoughts, feelings, emotions and impulses which 
the outer world of objects arouses within it. The 
mind is not and cannot be a purely passive, pas- 



THE SOCIAL EGO 125 

sionless, and disinterested thing, — a mere recipi- 
ent, like a piece of passive, sensitive wax, to 
receive impressions and make passive records of 
events and things in the outer world. 

On the contrary, it is and must be an active and 
reactive thing, a responsive agency, an outgoing 
will, an instrument for responding to and reacting 
upon the outer world. Its function is to respond 
and react -fitly to the impressions and stimuli it 
receives from without, and to give full, voluntary, 
and forcible expression to itself, — to the burning 
thoughts, the ardent desires, the passionate im- 
pulses, which the things and events of the world 
arouse and inspire within it. The mind is and can 
be no passive and passionless spectator of things ; 
on the contrary, it is and must be an intensely 
interested, passionate, and impulsive actor and 
aggressive will in the world's drama, and must have 
full opportunity to give adequate vent, utterance, 
voice, and expression to its thoughts and feelings, 
its passions and emotions, its desires and dreads, 
its loves and hates, its hopes and fears. And how 
could it give voice and vent, expression and utter- 
ance, to itself if it had no fellow-minds and com- 
panion spirits to whom it could express and utter 
itself; who could furnish an adequate and normal 
outlet and vent for the outflowing and overflow- 
ing mental and emotional energies with which 
the world had endowed it; with whom it could 
commune and have spiritual commerce and ex- 
change? 



126 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

Suppose it was shut completely off from all such 
expression, voice, and vent ; from all possible com- 
merce and communion with fellow-minds of any 
kind. What would be the result? Surely a mind 
so isolated and deprived of the exercises of an im- 
perious natural need for expression and outlet 
would degenerate and eventually disappear from 
the world. No such isolated mind could perma- 
nently maintain its existence in any conceivable 
world. The need for voluntary mental and spir- 
itual expression is just as great and certain as the 
need for mental impression and stimulus; and a 
mind deprived of all opportunity for expression, 
volition, and voice would be a mind deprived of the 
opportunity to exercise one-half of its normal func- 
tions. No, the mind needs to utter and express 
itself, to expend and send forth the mental ener- 
gies it has received from the world around. It is 
not a mere wax record, nor a mere stagnant res- 
ervoir for the collection of idle mental energies. 

Its true function, on the contrary, is that of a 
transmitter of energies, and it could never ade- 
quately and naturally transmit these spiritual 
energies except to a world of its own fellow-minds, 
to a social world of companion minds. Man has 
a passion to know, but equally strong is the pas- 
sion to tell, and express what he knows. The 
impulse to give voice to knowledge is as strong as 
the impulse to acquire it. The impulse to express 
is as strong as the impulse to experience. And 
the mind can never realize these impulses and pas- 



THE SOCIAL EGO 127 

sions of its being, and, therefore, it can never fully 
and adequately realize itself and its own nature, 
except in a community of minds like its own. The 
mind, therefore, as an active, energetic, willing, 
and dynamic being, demands as one of the essential 
conditions of its existence, maintenance, and de- 
velopment, that it be embosomed in a body of 
minds ; that it be a citizen in a society of minds ; 
that it be incorporated into a spiritual organism, 
— the psycho-organism, the psycho-zoon, or the 
social mind. 

It is, therefore, evident from a study of the na- 
ture of mind that it cannot exist except in a multi- 
ple and social form, in the form of a society of 
minds, a society of selves, and a society of souls. 
It cannot possibly exist in the single, solitary 
form in which the God of dualistic supernaturalism 
was and is supposed to exist; and it cannot exist 
either in that private, individual, and separate 
form in which the souls of men are still largely 
supposed to exist. The only possible conscious- 
ness is a social consciousness ; the only possible 
mind is a social mind; the only possible self is a 
social self; the only possible soul and spirit is a 
social soul and spirit ; and the only possible God is 
a social God. The individual mind and conscious- 
ness, the individual soul and self, and the individ- 
ual divinity and God, are mere illusions and 
superstitions, and have no existence whatever in 
the true nature of things. 

We have previously seen, in discussing the prob- 



128 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

lem of mind and body, or spirit and matter, that 
monism repudiates and disproves the doctrine that 
these things are separate entities, or things in 
themselves. Monism asserts and proves that mind 
and body, or spirit and matter, are simply the 
inner-appearing and outer-appearing aspects of 
the selfsame, identical, and concrete entity, — the 
concrete reality and being of the world. Pure 
mind and pure matter, or pure spirit and pure 
body, are pure abstractions, pure illusions, and 
pure superstitions ; and they have in themselves no 
concrete existence and reality whatever. 

Now, if this is true as regards mind and matter, 
spirit and body, it is equally true as regards sub- 
jects and objects, for subject and object is only 
another name for mind and matter. By subjects, 
as such, we simply mean minds or spirits ; and by 
objects, as such, we simply mean bodies or material 
things. Consequently, if pure mind and pure mat- 
ter are pure abstractions, then, of course, pure 
objects and pure subjects are also the same. And 
this is the truth; a subject which is not also an 
actual or possible object; or an object which is not 
also, to some extent and to some degree, a subject, 
which has not some core and center of subjectivity, 
no matter how faint and microscopic, does not 
concretely and really exist. 

As we saw when discussing the evolution of minds, 
from that of the corpuscle up to that of society, 
scientific philosophers have been logically and ex- 
perimentally driven to the doctrine of panpsychism 



THE SOCIAL EGO 129 

or all-mindism, which means the universal coexist- 
ence of mind and matter, or of subjective states 
of some kind and degree, in all the matter (so 
called) that exists, from the lowest possible to the 
highest. Every ion and atom of matter must 
logically and in some sense have its little sub- 
microscopic center and core of subjectivity. Con- 
sequently, subjectivity or mind, of some kind and 
degree, is as universal and omnipresent as is ob- 
jectivity or matter. Both pure subjects and pure 
objects, or pure subjectivity and pure objectivity, 
are pure abstractions and pure illusions, just as 
pure mind and pure matter is ; in fact, this is only 
another way of stating the same facts. There- 
fore, subjects of some kind and degree, no matter 
how low, are just as numerous, omnipresent, and 
universal as objects. They, as the dual aspects 
of all concrete reality, coexist, conjunct and par- 
allel to each other. Every object that exists is 
also a subject or has some core and center of 
subjectivity, 2 just as every known and acknowl- 
edged subject that exists in this natural and known 
world, such as men and animals in general, is also 
an object and material thing. Subject and ob- 
ject coexist universally in perfect and indissoluble 
conjunction in the concrete reality of the world; 
there are just as many subjects in the world as 
there are objects. They are united together in 
nature and cannot be separated or completely and 

2 Every object is also a shareowner in all the subjectiv- 
ity that exists, since it is an organic part of an organic 
whole. 



130 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

utterly divorced, no matter how much the analyz- 
ing and abstracting mind of man, with its inor- 
ganic views of things, may separate and divorce 
them in thought. Therefore the necessary multi- 
plicity and multiformity of the objective world 
of being, in order that consciousness and self-con- 
sciousness may exist, necessarily implies the equal 
and parallel multiplicity and multiformity of the 
subjective world of being. In other words, the ob- 
jective aspects of the concrete reality of the world 
must be paralleled by the subjective aspects of the 
same. 

We have seen that the nature of the mind de- 
mands that its world of objects and subjects both 
be a multiple and multiform world; and now we 
see that the nature of the concrete reality also 
demands that the world of objects and subjects 
shall be equally multiple and multiform. A per- 
fect parallelism must exist between the number of 
bodies and the number of minds of every possible 
kind and degree, or between the objective and sub- 
jective aspects of the concrete and real being of 
the world. The necessary plurality of objects 
demands an equal plurality of subjects of every 
kind and degree of subjectivity that is possible. 

The necessary plurality of objects and bodies 
implies and demands the parallel plurality of sub- 
jects and minds. Therefore it is true that because 
of the nature of consciousness and mind itself, 
which demands the multiplicity of objects and 
subjects, and because of the nature of concrete 



THE SOCIAL EGO 131 

reality, which demands the parallel and conjoined 
coexistence of subjects and objects, the conscious- 
ness and mind of the world cannot possibly exist 
except under a social, multiple, and multiform 
form. Mind cannot exist, or be logically con- 
ceived to exist, in a single and solitary form such 
as the God of dualistic theology was supposed to 
exist in, nor in the private and separate forms in 
which men have almost universally been supposed 
to exist. No, the mind is not and cannot be a 
single, solitary, or separate thing. The only pos- 
sible form consistent with the nature of the mind 
and of concrete reality is the multiple, multiform, 
and social form. The only possible or conceivable 
mind is the plural and social mind; the single, in- 
dividual mind by itself cannot exist. It is a bald 
abstraction and a pure illusion. It can only ex- 
ist as a fractional element and organic constituent 
of the integral, plural, and social mind. The in- 
dividual mind (so-called) is not a mind at all, — 
that is, it is not an integer of mind; it is only a 
fraction, part, and organ of a mind. The in- 
tegral mind, the integer of consciousness, is, first, 
the social mind, the society of minds, and, second 
and finally, the cosmic mind, the mind of all frac- 
tional and partial minds, the mind of God. 

Mind can only exist in the plural number, that 
is, as minds; and it can only exist in the social 
form, i. e. as a society of minds. Mmd in the 
singular number and in the individual form is im- 
po8Stble. 



182 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

There are no pure subjects and no pure objects 
in existence, but everything that exists is a sub- 
jective-objective being or thing. Nevertheless it 
is true that the subjectivity of one being or thing, 
— inorganically, abstractly, and separately con- 
sidered, — may be immensely higher and greater 
than that of another being or thing. They may, 
as separate parts, differ immensely in degree, 
though not in ultimate kind. Those beings that 
are visibly conscious to us are called and regarded 
as subjective beings, or subjects and minds, while 
those whose subjectivity is invisible to us are called 
objective things, or objects and bodies. But here 
originates a certain fallacy and illusion resulting 
from abstraction, mental analysis, and a very nar- 
row area of human vision. It is the fallacy and 
vice of an abstract, inorganic, pluralistic, and 
separatist conception and view-point of the world 
of being. The true conception of the world is 
the organic conception, — the conception of the 
world as a bona fide, integral, cosmic organism, a 
world-being, world-spirit, and world-mind; not as 
a mere collection and congeries of many bona fide, 
separate beings and things. And the parts of the 
world must be conceived as the cosmic organs, 
structures, and functions of the bona fide cosmic 
Organism. 

Thus the subjectivity that we see displayed in 
men, and animals, and plants, is the segregated 
subjectivity of the one cosmic organism of being 
into certain specialized and differentiated organs 



THE SOCIAL EGO 133 

of that world-organism. Through this process of 
segregation, differentiation, and specialization, 
some specialized organs and parts of the cosmic 
organism as a whole secure and display an immense 
amount of the subjectivity of the world, while 
other equally specialized parts of another kind 
obtain and manifest but little or none (as far as 
we can perceive). Yet both these large amounts 
and these small amounts of subjectivity displayed 
by the different specialized organs of the cosmic 
organism belong to the organic unit of being as 
a whole, and hence it justly belongs to all the 
parts equally, as cooperative participants in the 
attributes of the whole organism. They are all 
joint and equal owners and possessors, sharehold- 
ers and partners in it. Just as in the human body 
and organism, so in the cosmic body and organ- 
ism the subjectivity belongs to the unit and the 
whole, and, therefore, to all the organs and parts. 
Just as in the human body the differentiated 
and specialized brain monopolizes almost wholly 
the subjectivity of the whole cooperative organism, 
while the skull and skeleton seem to be as dead as 
stones, so in the cosmic organism the subjectivity 
is segregated into specialized planets, to the spe- 
cialized surfaces of these planets, to the specialized 
organic life, to the specialized human body, and 
finally to the specialized human brain. So that, 
in fact, man's brain is not his brain merely, ex- 
clusively, and privately, but, on the contrary, it 
is also the terrestrial brain, and then again, the 



134 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

solar brain, and, finally and most truly of all, it is 
the brain of the universe, and world-organism ; the 
cosmic brain of the cosmic body, and the terrestrial 
consciousness of the cosmic mind. 

And the consciousness and subjectivity is not 
merely the consciousness of the little specialized 
parts and organs which immediately display it ; on 
the contrary, the consciousness belongs most truly 
of all to the cosmic organism as a perfect, unitary, 
and cooperative whole. It is the cosmic conscious- 
ness of the cosmic brain. Just as in the human 
body the consciousness belongs, in justice and in 
truth, to the whole organism as a cooperative unit, 
and, therefore, to each and every part and organ 
of the body, so in the cosmic body and world-or- 
ganism the consciousness belongs, in justice and 
in truth, to the whole organism and unit and to 
each and every part of it as equal creators of this 
consciousness, as equal owners and possessors of 
it, and as equal shareholders and participants in 
it. No parts are, or in justice and truth can be, 
shut out and excluded in the least. They can 
all say, " It is not exclusively mine or thine, but 
it is ail-inclusively ' ours,' " for we are all " It," 
and we are all one, — one vast, perfectly cooper- 
ative and united whole and organism. The con- 
sciousness of the world belongs to the world as a 
unit-whole; it does not belong, in truth, to any 
part exclusively, and it does belong, in truth and 
justice, to every part equally ; so that, organically 
conceived, no parts of the world are unconscious 






THE SOCIAL EGO 135 

and mindless, but all are equally conscious and 
mindful, for the mind is a j oint, cooperative prod- 
uct and attribute, and a joint, cooperative pos- 
session. 

Every part and organ of the human body is 
necessary to, and cooperates in, the production of 
the consciousness which is localized and focalized 
in the specialized organ, the brain. Without the 
skull, the brain could not exist ; and without the 
skeleton and other organs, it could not be a hu- 
man body. The consciousness of the brain is the 
joint and cooperative product of every organ of 
the body, and it is, therefore, not the property 
and possession and the attribute and quality of 
the brain only, exclusively, and privately; it is, 
first, the property and possession, attribute and 
quality, of the whole organism as a unit ; and then, 
secondly, of each and every cooperative organ and 
structure of the body which was necessary to its 
existence. The mind is, in truth and justice, the 
property of the skull and skeleton, just as much as 
it is of the cerebrum and cerebellum. The per- 
fume and beauty of the rose belongs to the whole 
rosebush and to every leaf and branch and rootlet 
of it just a*s surely as it does to the rose blossom 
itself. It is a joint, cooperative, and organic 
product and attribute, and a joint, cooperative, 
and organic property and possession. The bril- 
liant lights of the incandescent lamps belong to 
the whole electric lighting system and to every piece 
of wire and mechanism in it just as surely as they 



136 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

do to the little carbon filaments. So in the vast 
cosmic organism of the world, the mind and con- 
sciousness is, first, the mind of the whole universal 
and organic body, and then, secondly, it is the 
joint and equal property and possession, product 
and attribute, of every part, organ, and member 
of it. The consciousness which is segregated in 
the brain of man belongs in common to the stones 
under his feet and the stars above his head. It 
is not his any more than it is theirs, — not one 
single particle of it. 

Assuming the necessary truth of panpsychism, 
then, if we suppose the primal ether to be in an 
absolutely undivided and undifferentiated form 
and state; we would be forced logically to assume 
that the spiritual or subjective condition of the 
ether was a sub-subjective state, — a state of 
potential, but not of actual, subjectivity, even of 
the faintest and lowest kind. But this notion of 
the potential which is not also the actual is, I be- 
lieve, fallacious and needless. I am unable to 
conceive of any kind of potentiality which is not 
really actuality, as far as it is really anything 
at all. 

I believe and conceive that a simple, undivided, 
undifferentiated unit of being is impossible, that 
such a unit could not be anything, or do anything, 
— it could not move, or act, or live, or be con- 
scious, or anything else; in fact, it could have no 
attributes of real being at all. So I cannot be- 
lieve in mere potential being, nor in mere potential 



THE SOCIAL EGO 187 

states of subjective being. I believe that real be- 
ing is necessarily actual, and that real being is 
necessarily in actual subjective states and never 
in merely potential states. Hence I believe that 
the real being of the world never exists in an ab- 
solutely simple, undivided, and undifferentiated 
form or state, and that such a form and state of 
real being is impossible. 

Being cannot actually exist in an absolutely 
simple, undivided, and undifferentiated form and 
state, but must always exist in a complex, divided, 
and differentiated form and state. Hence the 
primal ether can never be in an absolutely undi- 
vided form and state, but must always be in a 
divided form and state of some kind and degree; 
and during its evolution it advances from its low- 
est and smallest divided forms and states to its 
highest and largest divided forms and states. 

The primary evolutionary divisions of the ether 
will be of the smallest fractional form and char- 
acter; and the primary subjective states will be 
of the lowest and faintest possible character. The 
evolution of subjectivity will result from the union 
and clustering of these primary subdivisions of 
the primal ether into ever larger and higher forms 
until the highest we know is eventually reached 
in the body and mind of man and human society. 
The evolution of mind then will be from the small- 
est and lowest divisions and fractions of being to 
the largest and highest, and will not be from no 
divisions and fractions at all to the largest and 



188 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

highest, nor from a potential form and state of 
being to an actual form and state, and from thence 
onward to the largest and the highest. 

The first or primary subdivisions of the ether, 
so far as we now know, are the electrical cor- 
puscles or ions. These smallest of the fractional 
subdivisions of the unitary ether, with their lowest 
and faintest of subjective states, unite and cluster 
together to form the corpuscular society of bodies 
and minds, which is called the atom. The primal 
ether, constituted and formed as it is of an in- 
finite number of electrical corpuscles in funda- 
mental and perfect unity, must be considered as 
the primal and original society of being. The 
primal ether is a society of ions or electrical cor- 
puscles. It is the first and the original society of 
finite beings ; and Being, moreover, as this analysis 
proves, cannot be conceived to exist except under 
a plural and social form. The primal ether is a 
corporal and psychical society of the first order 
and degree of composition. 

The atom, which is a closer and more compact 
society of ions, or corpuscles, is a corporal and 
psychical society of the second order and degree 
of composition. At the second stage of evolu- 
tionary composition and integration, the atoms 
unite and cluster to form the molecule, which is, 
therefore, a corporal and psychical society of 
atoms. It is a society of the third order and de- 
gree of composition. The third stage in the evo- 
lutionary process is the union and clustering of 



THE SOCIAL EGO 139 

the molecules into the cell, which is, therefore, a 
corporal and psychical society of molecules, and 
a society of the fourth order and degree of com- 
position. It is a cellular society of bodies, and a 
cellular society of minds. 

At the next and fourth stage of the evolutionary 
process of integration and differentiation, the 
single cells unite and cluster together to form the 
organism, which is, therefore, a corporal and 
psychical society of cells, and a society of the fifth 
order and degree of composition. It is an organic 
society of cellular bodies and cellular minds. 

At the fifth and last stage, so far as we know, 
of the evolutionary process, the single, individual 
human organisms unite and congregate together to 
form the state or community, which is thus a cor- 
poral and psychical society of organisms, and a 
society of the sixth order and degree of composi- 
tion. It is a communal society of organic bodies 
and organic minds, and is the last and highest 
evolutionary form of body and mind of which we 
have, so far, any definite knowledge. 

Thus from the beginning to the end of life and 
evolution we find nothing but societies of bodies 
and societies of minds ; we nowhere and at no time 
find any simple, individual bodies or simple, indi- 
vidual minds. Neither mind nor body, in a simple, 
individual, and single form, either exists or can be 
conceived to exist. Every mind that exists, from 
that of the primal and least differentiated ether 
to that of the state or most differentiated form of 



140 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

being, is a society of minds, and is always plural 
and social in form. The mind is always and 
everywhere a plural and a social thing. It is never 
a single, simple, and individual thing. The mind 
of the primal ether is a plural and social mind, and 
so is every succeeding evolutionary development 
of it. The minds of the atoms, molecules, cells, 
organisms, and states are all plural and social 
minds. In no instance are they purely individual 
minds, not even in the case of the so-called indi- 
vidual man. 

Thus we are shown once more, and in a most 
conclusive manner, that the plurality and sociality 
of the mind of the world is a necessary and in- 
evitable fact in the nature of the Being of the 
world. The Being of the world is necessarily 
a social being; the life of the world is necessarily 
a social life; the mind of the world is necessarily 
a social mind, a multiple and multiform society of 
minds. The Personality of the world is necessa- 
rily a social Personality, and the Divinity 
and Deity of the world is necessarily a social di- 
vinity, and a social god, — a divine society. 

The mind is a cosmic function of the cosmic 
organism. The mind is not a thing in itself or 
by itself ; it is merely the function of a larger and 
truer thing. It is like the eye of the body; the 
eye is not a thing by itself, it is merely the organ 
of a larger and truer thing, and its function of 
seeing is merely the delegated function of this 
larger, and truer whole. An eye could not exist 



THE SOCIAL EGO 141 

by itself and apart from a larger body ; it can only 
exist as a specialized part of a cooperative and 
organic whole. And it is fitted for and delegated 
to perform a specific function for this larger, 
cooperative, and organic whole. The eye is the 
eye of the whole body, and of each and every 
part of it. It does not belong to itself alone; it 
belongs to the feet and the hands, the heart and 
the lungs, as much and as surely as it does to 
itself. The eye does not see for itself; it sees for 
the whole body. It is delegated to do the seeing 
for the whole body, and for each and every other 
part. It sees for the feet and the hands, the heart 
and the lungs; and they in return perform their 
specific functions for the eye and all the other 
parts of the body. 

There is a division of labors and of functions 
in the cooperative body of the organism, and no 
part functions for itself alone. The feet can see 
and the hands can see, but they see through the 
eye, which they have delegated to do their seeing 
for them and for the rest of the body. Every 
part of the body has an eye and every part of it 
has sight, for the eye belongs to it and the sight 
belongs to it as the common property and pos- 
session, the public attribute and power, of the 
whole cooperative organism. No organ of an or- 
ganism belongs to itself alone, nor functions for 
itself alone. It belongs to the whole and to each 
and every part ; and it functions for the whole and 
for each and every part. Hence every function 



148 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

and attribute of the whole cooperative organism 
belongs to each and every part of the cooperative 
and organic whole; and not one of these parts 
can, in truth and in justice, be excluded from par- 
ticipation in them all. 

As the eye is to the human body, so the mind 
is to the same. The mind, like the eye, is the mind 
and consciousness of the whole human body and 
of each and every part of it. It is not simply the 
mind and consciousness of the brain ; it is the mind 
of the skull and the skeleton, of the feet and the 
hands, the heart and the lungs. It is their mind 
and consciousness just as surely and just as much 
as it is that of the head and the brain, the cere- 
brum and cerebellum. They have delegated the 
brain to do their thinking, while they are per- 
forming some other specific function for the or- 
ganism as a whole and for the brain as a part. 
The consciousness of the brain is the consciousness 
of the feet, and the feet are no more mindless 
things than the brain itself is a mindless thing. 
We have no right whatever to say that the brain 
is a conscious being and that the feet are uncon- 
scious things, for the consciousness displayed by 
the brain is the common, joint, organic property, 
attribute, and creation of the whole organic and 
cooperative body, and of its each and every part. 
They have simply divided their common organic 
labors and functions so that the concentrated and 
segregated consciousness of the whole cooperative 



THE SOCIAL EGO 143 

body will be displayed " en masse " by that par- 
ticular organ and in that particular place instead 
of being diffused and dispersed uniformly through- 
out the whole unorganized mass. They have 
cooperated together to make this common con- 
sciousness appear in that particular organ and 
in that particular place ; but it is still the common 
consciousness and belongs equally to all, and is not 
the private property and exclusive attribute and 
possession of the little delegated organ that hap- 
pens to display it. And so the mind of man is not 
the mind of the little human brain, but of the whole 
human body, and of every single part of it. 

But as we clearly see that the brain is but the 
organ of a larger cooperative and organic whole, 
so we can clearly see that man himself is but the 
organ of that vast cooperative and truly organic 
whole which we call the Universe, Nature, or God. 
For man is not a true or whole organism or thing 
any more than a brain is; he is merely a sub-or- 
ganism, a partial and incomplete organism; in 
fact, like his own brain, he is merely a larger and 
more complicated organ of Nature as a whole. 
As the brain does not function for itself, but for 
the whole organic body of man, so man himself 
does not think and function for himself only, but 
for the whole of Nature. Man does not think and 
know for himself alone; he has simply been dele- 
gated, so to speak, to do the thinking and the 
knowing for the universe at large, in company, 



144 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

without doubt, of other thinking and knowing be- 
ings on other planets and in other systems through- 
out the cosmos as a whole. 

As man thinks through the little organ of his 
brain, so Nature thinks through man, and through 
other beings like him in other worlds than this. 
Man is one of Nature's brains and one of Nature's 
minds; and when man thinks, it is the Universe 
that thinks in him and through him. When man 
knows, the Universe knows, in him and through 
him; for man is the eye with which the Universe 
sees, and the mind with which the Universe knows. 

" I am the eye with which the Universe 
Beholds itself and knows itself divine." 

I am the mind with which the Universe thinks 
its inmost thoughts and finds its inmost soul. And 
when man shall really discover himself, it will sig- 
nify the self-discovery of God. 

" Far more than himself is the man we see, 
For a mind in the body of God is he." 



CHAPTER XII 
THE ETHICS OF MONISM 

The ethics of an unqualified monism are self- 
evident. If there is really but one true integer of 
being in the world, but one true organism, but one 
true individual and person ; if the universe has but 
one real inhabitant, and the entire population of 
the cosmos is one and only one ; if the individuality 
and separateness of men and things is a sheer il- 
lusion and a blind and barbarous superstition; 
then the ethical conclusions are plain and self-evi- 
dent. If there is but one and only one Being, 
then there can be but one and only one real interest 
to be cared for and subserved in this world, and 
that, of course, is the supreme ancj all-inclusive 
interest of the one and only Being of which every 
so-called individual being is merely a flowing, 
stream-like fraction and part. Hence the primal 
principle of a monistic ethic will be a law of di- 
vine egoism and godlike selfishness, which, trans- 
lated into human language and practise, means, 
humanly speaking, an otherwise unqualified human 
altruism and unselfishness. 

Human altruism and so-called unselfishness has 
always been, in fact, a divine egoism and a godlike 

145 



146 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

selfishness, for the interests of all beings as one. 
The highest and truest ethics have always taught 
mankind to act just as though all beings were 
really one ; and what a monistic ethic will now teach 
them is that all beings are really and truly one, 
and that separateness and multiplicity of real be- 
ings is an illusion and shallow superstition. It 
shows how true the ethical instincts of the best of 
men were in the past. For they felt and could 
vaguely see, as " through a glass darkly," that 
somehow and in some sense all men were as one. 
But this ethical insight was dim, uncertain, mys- 
tical, and occasional. There was nothing clear, 
certain, scientific, or logical about it. But in the 
course of human evolution it has now, in due time, 
become the latter. 

Monism corroborates and endorses the highest, 
noblest, and finest instincts and sympathies of 
mankind; and with scientific precision and logical 
exactitude it shows to man, at last, that all beings 
are really one; that what has, humanly speaking, 
always been called human altruism and unselfish- 
ness, is in reality a divine egoism and a godlike 
prudence and selfishness, for all being is really one. 
Human sympathy is, in fact, the natural sympathy 
which one member and organ of God's own body 
and organism feels for another; and human love, 
in the last analysis, is, as Spinoza said, " the love 
wherewith God loves himself." 

There can be no divine altruism or godlike un- 
selfishness, for there is but one Being, without a 



THE ETHICS OF MONISM 147 

second or another in the world. Only two moral 
policies are possible. First, a divine prudence 
and profound egoism which, with a perfect and 
godlike vision, sees all beings that exist as the 
members of one divine and godlike body and as the 
organs of one divine and godlike organism; and, 
on the other hand, a shallow, superficial pluralism 
which imagines that all beings, so-called, are really 
as separate as they seem ; and would coax and ca- 
jole men against their real natures and their real 
interests to be kind to the others outside them- 
selves. 

As Benjamin Kidd said, men cannot act morally 
unless they act unselfishly; and they cannot act 
unselfishly unless they act irrationally and against 
their own real and selfish interests. That is the 
logical position of a genuine pluralism. But a 
genuine monism doesn't have to tell men to act 
irrationally, unselfishly, and against their real in- 
terests, and then have to coax and cajole them to 
do so, but it proves to them that their separate 
selfhood is a blind illusion, that their true inter- 
ests are universal, that the center of their moral 
universe is out there in the heart and bosom of all 
things, and not in here, in the little ego of the 
streaming and current self. And it urges them to 
seek their highest and truest self-interests, to act 
with perfect rationality and prudence; for it 
proves to them that the true law is one of a divine 
and all-inclusive prudence and egoism, and a god- 
like and universal selfishness. Monism, like plu- 



148 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

ralism, tells men to be, humanly speaking, unselfish 
and loving; but it gives them a different reason, 
and that reason has a tremendous force and fer- 
vor which the motives of pluralism could never ac- 
quire. 

Pluralism tells men to be unselfish and loving 
because, it says, these other separate beings are 
quite similar to ourselves and we ought to have a 
fellow-feeling with them. But monism does not 
have to coax and urge men to be loving and sym- 
pathetic. It simply draws aside the curtains of 
ignorance and blindness, and permits men to see 
in the broad, bright light of day the perfect, un- 
qualified oneness, the absolute, indissoluble identity 
of all apparently separate beings and things. 
And it says to them, " Now that your eyes have 
been opened and you see things as they really are 
and not as they formerly seemed, your own intelli- 
gence and self-interests will tell you what to do 
and why to do it." " And they shall know the 
truth, and the truth shall make them free." Free 
forever after from all deliberate, human, and per- 
sonal selfishness, hate, and anger; from all delib- 
erate injustice, oppression, and cruelty; and as 
free to love and sympathize with all other men and 
creatures as they are free to love themselves; for 
these fellowmen, in fact, are really themselves, — 
bone of their bone, flesh of their flesh, and soul of 
their soul, — in the indivisible, indissoluble unity of 
God's own body and of God's own soul. There 
is no absolute line or mark that separates one be- 



THE ETHICS OF MONISM 149 

ing from another, for they are all really one, 
though to man's purblind eyes and impressions 
they appear to be many. 

It is impossible to believe that human selfishness 
and hate, with all the sins and miseries that flow 
from them, can permanently exist in the world when 
once it becomes thoroughly and universally con- 
vinced and certain of the absolute and perfect 
oneness and identity of all the Being that exists, 
as monism proves and teaches. 

Practically the whole of ethics almost is the 
warfare against selfishness and the hate that comes 
from it; and when the very existence of the sepa- 
rate human self has been completely disproven, 
and the belief in its existence has been utterly de- 
stroyed and torn out by the roots, then how 
can selfishness remain a force or a factor in 
human life? In totally destroying all belief in 
the separate individual self, monism must destroy, 
in time, all selfishness itself. The function of 
ethics has always been to unify, enlighten and in- 
spire man's moral interests. This pluralism can 
never do, and only a true monism can. 

Monism places the center of man's moral uni- 
verse out there, in the whole and godlike self. 
Pluralism and dualism place it in here, in the little 
human ego, the flowing and current phenomenon 
of the present moment. Selfishness and hate are 
not only sinful; they are really idiotic when the 
truth is known. Shall I, like a fool, hate my own 
true self? Shall my right hand, like a fool, hate 



150 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

my left, and strike it down in hate and anger? 
Shall God hate himself and curse his own very 
life in malice? Shall the members of God's own 
body hate and war upon each other? No, not if 
they have reason, and can see their perfect unity 
and identity. No, not if God knows himself, and 
not if man knows himself. For all being is one 
Being, and all hate is self-hate, and all injury is 
self-injury, just as all love is self-love, and all 
blessing is self-blessing. All sin is due either to 
blindness, ignorance, or weakness. A blind God 
may hate himself and make war upon himself be- 
cause in his blindness he cannot see or know him- 
self; but when he comes to see and know himself, 
will not this self-hatred and war upon himself 
cease? 

The Swami Vivekananda said : " Hatred pro- 
ceeds from imperfect knowledge, which makes us 
perceive objects as separate from one another. 
But when we see our true ' self ' in others, how 
can we hate another without hating our * self ' ? 
It would be impossible for ' self ' to hate * self.' 
Where self-knowledge is, there can remain no feel- 
ing of hatred. He who realizes all beings in the 
' self ' never hates anything or any being. When 
hatred is gone, jealousy and all selfish feelings 
which we call wicked disappear. What remains? 
The ordinary love which stands in opposition to 
hatred vanishes, but divine love begins to reign 
in the heart of the seer. True love means the ex- 
pression of Oneness. If we see our true c self ' in 



THE ETHICS OF MONISM 151 

others, we cannot help loving them as we love our 
self. Now, we understand the meaning of ' Love 
thy neighbor as thyself.' " Vedanta has always 
taught this truth : " When all beings appear as 
parts of one universal self, there is neither delu- 
sion, nor fear, nor sorrow. . . . Sorrow and fear 
arise so long as there is the sense of duality and 
multiplicity. In absolute oneness, however, there 
cannot remain fear, sorrow, suffering, separation, 
or self-delusion." This is another result of self- 
knowledge. " Know thyself." The lower self 
vanishes and all selfishness is destroyed. The 
higher self emerges and all unselfishness is at- 
tained. The higher self is called " Atman." It 
is pure, spotless, sinless. Vedanta teaches that 
we are not born in sin and iniquity, but that our 
" Atman," our true self, is sinless. The word 
" kavi " means poet and also the seer of things. 
Self is described as the greatest poet of the uni- 
verse. This is one of the most beautiful expres- 
sions and attributes that can be given to Divin- 
ity. 

" He is the Poet, the universe is his poetry. 
He is the greatest artist. His art we see in the 
sunrise and sunset. The sun, moon and stars are 
nothing but the paintings on infinite space by the 
hands of the almighty Artist. Monism alone ex- 
plains morality; the others teach it, but cannot 
give you its reason." Christianity says, " Love 
thy neighbor as thyself " ; but monism says, 
" Your neighbor is yourself." " He who sees 



152 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

every one in himself, and himself in every one, 
thus seeing the same God living in all in the same 
manner, he no more kills the self by the self. And 
he realizes at last the beautiful and inspiring truth 
that love, lover, and beloved are one. For him 
illusion disappears and all suffering is gone." 

" The Traveller and the road seem one, 
With the errand to be done, 
For love, lover and beloved are One." x 

" Self-love thus pushed to social, to divine, 
Gives thee to make thy neighbor's blessing thine. 

Grasp the whole world of reason, life, and sense, 
In one close system of benevolence: 

God loves from whole to parts; but human soul 
Must rise from individual to the whole. 
Self-love but serves the virtuous mind to wake, 
As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake; 
The center moved, a circle straight succeeds, 
Another still, and still another spreads ; — 
Friend, parent, neighbor, first it will embrace; 
His country next, and next all human race; 
Wide, and more wide, the o'er-flowings of the mind 
Take every creature in, of every kind; 
Earth smiles around, with boundless bounty blest, 
And Heaven beholds its image in man's breast." 2 

" Never will I enter Paradise until every atom of 
the universe has passed in before me; never will I 

i Vivekananda. 

2 Pope, "Essay on Man." 



THE ETHICS OF MONISM 153 

seek private, individual salvation; never will I enter 
eternal peace alone." 3 

The ethics of monism, it must not be overlooked, 
is an evolutionary ethics ; and the ethics of evolu- 
tion is one of self-development and self-realization 
for being in general. The ethics of an evolution- 
ary monism, therefore, is not only one of altruism 
and self-surrender for the individual, in so far as 
that policy may be necessary and wise in the para- 
mount interest of all as one, but it is also one of 
the utmost possible self-development and self-re- 
alization for all beings as one, which thus includes 
the individual as a necessary and constituent part 
of the whole. 

The frequent collision of interests, immediately 
and apparently at least, between part and part, 
and part and whole renders the introduction into 
social life of the policy of a partial self-surrender 
on the part of the individual absolutely necessary 
in the interests of all as one. The positive and 
final principle of ethics, however, is self-realiza- 
tion for being in general. 

The moral law, therefore, has a distinctly dual- 
istic aspect. Ego and alter, individual and so- 
ciety, part and whole, face each other in mutual 
opposition, apparently at least. This two-faced 
situation demands the combination and concilia- 
tion of two apparently opposite principles. As 
the ethical principle of evolution and of existence 
3 Hindu Sage. 



154 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

in general, the moral law commands the utmost 
possible self-development, self-perfection, and self- 
realization for all being. As the ethical principle 
of monism, in relation to social and individual life, 
the moral law demands self-surrender and sacrifice 
on the part of the individual in so far as that 
moral policy is necessary in the paramount inter- 
est of the social unit and whole. 

In a word, the moral law commands both a posi- 
tive and divine self-assertion and a negative and 
humane self-denial in so far as the latter is abso- 
lutely necessary and wise. It commands, on the 
one hand, a godlike egoism, self-assertion, self- 
perfection, and self-realization; and, on the other 
hand, it demands a humane altruism, self-surren- 
der, and self-sacrifice in so far as this is necessary. 
Thus the moral law has a positive and negative 
side, a positive principle and a negative policy, — 
or, we may say, a positive and negative pole. The 
positive, primary, and supreme principle of ethics 
is the utmost possible self-development, self-reali- 
zation, self-perfection, and self-idealization for 
each and all as one. Altruism, self-denial, and 
self-sacrifice is merely the negative, secondary, 
and subordinate principle, or policy rather, of a 
social ethics. Self-realization and self-perfection, 
in fact, is the only real and final principle of 
ethics. It is, we may say, the teleological, or end 
and purpose, principle of ethics, since it has 
reference and regard to the positive end and pur- 



THE ETHICS OF MONISM 155 

pose of all ethics and all life. Self-sacrifice is 
merely a methodological, or means and ways, prin- 
ciple, since it has reference and regard only to the 
means and ways whereby self-realization may best 
be attained in social and individual life combined. 
Self-realization is the final, ultimate, and only real 
principle of ethics. Self-surrender is merely an 
instrumental and penultimate ethical policy. 

That a state of the utmost possible self-realiza- 
tion and self-fulfillment will be one of the utmost 
possible spiritual satisfaction, happiness, and 
beauty is assumed at the start by an evolutionary 
theory of ethics and of life. Modern evolutionism 
faces the world and the problem of life in a 
melioristic (if not an optimistic) attitude, and with 
a cheerful and hopeful outlook. In this respect 
it differs diametrically from the monism and evolu- 
tionism of ancient India, which was poisoned by 
a bitter pessimism and clouded by the darkest de- 
spair. Modern evolutionism assumes that life is 
better than death, existence than non-existence, 
creation than annihilation, and so it faces the 
world and life with an inherited occidental courage 
instead of an oriental and Indian despair, and it 
seeks life, realization, and immortality instead of 
death, annihilation, and a Nirvana of oblivion and 
nothingness. 

" 'Tis life whereof our nerves are scant, 
More life and fuller that we want." 



156 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

Life is not a failure and death a success in itself, 
as the pessimistic, world-weary Hindu said, but 
life on the whole is a success, and death is but a 
gateway to a larger and a fuller life. 



CHAPTER Xin 
THE GOD WHO FINDS HIMSELF 

"If the king goes mad, and goes about to find the king 
in his own country, he will not find him, because he is the 
king himself. It is better that we know we are the king 
and give up this fool's search after the king.'* 

Vivekananda. 

Is it not about time that our mad humanity 
gave up this " fool's search " after an " unknown," 
or " unknowable," or imaginary, unsociable, and 
impossible God? Is it not about time to realize 
that the only possible God is that real and actual 
Being which confronts and stares us in the face 
every day of our lives; which has openly faced 
and confronted humanity from the beginning of 
man's rational existence until now ; and which will 
continue to do so until the end, and until humanity 
shall finally realize clearly and completely that 
this real, open, frank, and persistent Being is the 
real God, or else there is no God at all. 

In ancient Greece men raised an altar to an 
" unknown God," and in recent days the agnostics 
have raised another to an " unknowable God " ; 
while for thousands of years past the dualistic, 
pluralistic, and supernatural religions of the world 
have dotted the face of the earth with the altars 

157 



158 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

and sanctuaries of an imaginary, unsociable, and 
impossible God. 

The age-long effort to find some conjectural be- 
ing behind the real being that persistently and 
eternally confronts us, to find some God behind 
the world, has ended in utter failure. There is 
not one single scrap or shred of reliable and trust- 
worthy evidence that this other, second, and con- 
jectural being, this unsociable God behind the 
world, exists, or has ever been seen, heard, or per- 
ceived in any way by man. Its existence is a pure 
conjecture and a bald assumption. Many are the 
assertions, and legion are the legends and myths 
concerning it, but of real evidence there is none. 
And now, at this conjuncture, modern science and 
philosophy have practically proven a conclusive 
thing: viz., that but one real Being exists; that 
two or more real integers of being are impossible, 
superfluous, 1 and inconceivable in the nature of 
things ; and that this one Being is a living, self- 
conscious cosmic organism, composed of many 
cooperating organs and functions ; that man is one 
of those organs and functions, — viz., one of the 
heads and brains and seats of its self-conscious- 
ness ; and this cosmic organism comes to self-con- 
sciousness, self-knowledge, and self-discovery in its 
earthly heads and brains ; and now, at last, it has 

i Pluralism and dualism are condemned by the logical law 
of parsimony, or economy of thought. One differentiated 
unit of being is sufficient for all cosmic purposes ; two would 
be superfluous; and many would be unthinkable. 



THE GOD WHO FINDS HIMSELF 159 

found itself, or at least is beginning to find itself, 
in man and on this earth. 

It has found that there is no other and second 
being than its whole, unitary self and organism. 
It finds that it is alone, all-embracing and supreme. 
Hence it finds itself as God, and as divine, or else 
there is no God or divinity in existence. Thus 
through man, as through his own head and brain, 
has God found himself at last. Thus through 
man and in man is God learning more and more to 
know himself. Thus through man, as through 
his human eye, is God — the cosmic Organism — 
beginning to see himself as he really and truly is ; 
as a complex, cooperative organism of being, per- 
fect in its organic unity, infinitely rich in its 
organic variety of structure and function, infinitely 
rich in its variety of experience and life. The 
Being of the world has been finding itself from the 
beginning; it has found itself definitely at last in 
some few minds at least, and it will go on finding 
more and more about itself till the end of its self- 
conscious, self-intelligent and self-critical exist- 
ence. 

Then when this earthly drama of the divine self- 
discovery, self-understanding, and self-realization 
is over, the earthly curtain may be rung down, and 
a similar drama begin again in some other planet, 
or some other stellar organism. We never grow 
tired of reading good stories, of seeing good 
plays, or having good times, of living good lives, 



160 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

of enjoying good things, or seeing beautiful ob- 
jects. And if these dramas of God's planetary 
lives are really good and desirable, when all is said 
and done, why should they not receive divine ap- 
plause and approval, and be repeated with infinite 
variations through all eternity? 

" God is the perfect poet, 
Who in his person acts his own creations." 2 

Modern science and philosophy have now ban- 
ished all beings but one from the world, and if that 
one and only Being that remains is not God, or 
is not worthy of that supreme name and title, then, 
of course, there is no God. 

Those who object to regarding the Universe as 
God, do so because they fail to see clearly and 
surely that it is a vast, sublime, and genuine or- 
ganism. They fail to see that man is not a true 
and genuine, but only a pseudo-organism, — in 
fact, a mere organ of the Cosmic Organism, dele- 
gated to display in his earthly and human way the 
consciousness and mind of the Cosmic Organism 
itself, just as man's brain is delegated to display 
the mind and reason of his human organism; just 
as a rose or lily is delegated to display the per- 
fume, color, and beauty of the plant; and just as 
a little carbon filament is selected and delegated 
to display the light vibrations of the electric sys- 
tem. A man is not a thing in himself and by him- 
self any more than his brain is a thing in itself, 

2 Browning. 



THE GOD WHO FINDS HIMSELF 161 

or a flower and blossom is a thing in itself, or a 
carbon filament is a thing in itself. A man, or 
blossom, or carbon filament, is only a part, an 
organ, and a function of a larger and truer thing, 
a higher, a more integral organism. Just like the 
head on the body, or the flower on the plant, man 
is only the head on the body of the Universe, the 
blossom on the stem of the cosmic Plant ; the brain 
of the cosmic Organism, and the mind of the cos- 
mic Spirit. Man is not one thing and the universe 
another and separate thing any more than man's 
brain is one thing and his body is another and 
separate thing, or a blossom is one thing and a 
plant is another and separate thing. 

Man and the universe are as truly and organ- 
ically one as man's brain and body, or the blossom 
and the plant, are one. There is no duality of 
beings and things here, but, on the contrary, a 
perfect organic unity, cooperation, and division 
of labors and of functions. Man is the head on 
nature's shoulders, the brain in nature's head, the 
mind in nature's universal organism. 

Those who object to regarding the Universe as 
God fail to see it concretely, as it is in reality, — 
one indivisible, cosmic Organism composed of many 
cooperating organs; and being the victims of the 
mental vice of abstraction, they view it inorgan- 
ically, pluralistically, in dismemberment, disjunc- 
tion, and decapitation. They, in the process of 
mental analysis, abstractly dismember, disjoin 
and decapitate the cosmic Organism; and having 



162 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

performed this act of mental dissection, they view 
the remains of the universe in separation and dis- 
organization ; compare and contrast the dismem- 
bered and decapitated organs of the cosmic body 
to the great disadvantage and indignity of the lat- 
ter. Man is the head on the shoulders of the cos- 
mic body, and we have no right to mentally 
decapitate this human head from the cosmic body, 
and then, having performed this vicious and mur- 
derous mental act, to view the two dissevered parts 
of the cosmic body separately, and to compare 
and contrast them with each other to the unjust 
flattery of the human head and the still more un- 
just contempt of the cosmic body. The human 
head, brain, and consciousness, is the head, brain, 
and consciousness of the whole cosmic body; and 
it is our duty to put the human head back upon 
the body of nature, to put the human brain back 
within the cosmic skull, so to speak, and to put 
the human mind and intelligence back within the 
spirit of the cosmic organism where it truly, 
justly, and originally belongs. Dualists, in 
their viciously abstract ways, first behead the uni- 
verse, then abstract its human brains and mentally 
banish its human intelligence and personality, and 
then call upon us to behold what a dead, brainless, 
mindless, and impersonal thing it is. 

But this dead, brainless, mindless, and imper- 
sonal universe of the dualists and pluralists is not 
the real, concrete universe at all, but a mere crea- 
ture of their mentally abstracting imagination; 



THE GOD WHO FINDS HIMSELF 168 

and 9uch a false and abstract universe, of course, 
could never be regarded as God by any sane be- 
ing. The real concrete universe, however, is a 
living, breathing, pulsing, thinking, striving, and 
straining organism, full of an irresistible and inde- 
structible life and consciousness; composed of an 
infinite number of organs and cooperative parts; 
with numberless minds, human on this planet, and 
human-like on others ; and all this life and activity, 
all this consciousness and thought, all these aims 
and ideals, and all this personality and spirituality 
are its very own. And if this complete, true and 
perfect organism of the Being of the world is not 
a person, then it must be because it is infinitely 
more than a person, and is a sublimely super-per- 
sonal being, an organism whose constituent units 
and atoms are persons, and which is thus consti- 
tuted into a sublime and universal society of per- 
sons, which, as we have shown before, is the only 
possible form under which consciousness and per- 
sonality can exist. If the Universe, as a whole 
and perfect organism, is not a personal being, then 
it must be because it is a super-personal being; 
and if it is not an individual mind, then it must be 
because it is something vastly higher than an in- 
dividual mind, — viz., a terrestrial and celestial 
society of minds, a society of spirits, and a society 
of persons, individuals and selves. It is a true 
spiritual organism existing under the only form 
in which a spiritual organism can exist, — viz., 
the social, multiple, and multiform form. 



164 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

Those who object to regarding the universe as 
God because as they claim it is not a " person," 
but only an " it," must be thoroughly taught and 
reminded of the fact that consciousness and per- 
sonality cannot possibly exist in the singular num- 
ber and solitary form, but that by its very nature 
and constitution it must necessarily exist in the 
plural number and social form. 

There is and can be no integral person what- 
ever in the singular number. An integral conscious 
being or person cannot exist except in the plural 
form of a society of persons. If you cannot be 
satisfied with personality in a multiple and social 
form, then you will have to do without personality 
altogether. 

The only possible or conceivable (integral) per- 
son is a society of persons; and a society of per- 
sons is an ideal person. A society of persons is 
the highest possible and conceivable form of per- 
sonality, and a social God is the only true God 
that can exist. You must be satisfied with this 
kind of a God or go without a true God alto- 
gether. 

The people who want a personal God, and not, 
as they say, a mere " it," really want a spiritual 
king, a divine monarch, and are not sufficiently 
democratic in spirit and instinct to be satisfied to 
exist in a spiritual republic or divine democracy. 
They want a spiritual monarch, a divine king; 
they want to live in a spiritual monarchy, a divine 
kingdom; and they desire to be the humble, spir- 



THE GOD WHO FINDS HIMSELF 165 

itual subjects of this spiritual monarchy and this 
divine king. They have not got king-worship and 
the monarchical spirit out of their spiritual sys- 
tem and blood as yet. Their conception of the 
world is a monarchical, dualistic, and aristocratic 
conception. They believe (or pretend to believe, 
a great many of them) that the constitution of the 
universe is a monarchical, dualistic, and aristo- 
cratic constitution, with a spiritual monarch and 
divine king at the head of it, ruling in absolute 
authority and power over the world and man, who 
are his mere creatures and humble, servile spiritual 
subjects. 

But this dualistic, monarchical conception of the 
universe is untrue, as monism has shown; and the 
monarchical and dualistic theories of God and 
the world and man which are drawn from it are 
equally false. As monism has clearly shown, the 
democratic conception of the universe is the true 
one, and the democratic constitution of the uni- 
verse is its true constitution. This world is not 
dualistically and monarchically constituted; it is, 
instead, monistically and democratically consti- 
tuted. This universe is not a spiritual monarchy 
and divine kingdom; it is a spiritual republic and 
a divine democracy. It is not ruled, governed, 
and guided from above and outside by a spiritual 
king and divine monarch. It is self-governing and 
self-guiding from within. It is a sovereign, self- 
sufficient, and divine democracy in itself. And 
this divine democracy of the Being of the world is 



166 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

the spiritual republic of the universe ; and this di- 
vine democracy and spiritual republic of the uni- 
verse is the God of monism, while dualism worships 
the imaginary king of an imaginary spiritual mon- 
archy. In this divine democracy and spiritual re- 
public of the universe every man and every being 
is an equal, spiritual, divine, and sovereign citizen. 

We men are not the servile, spiritual subjects 
of a spiritual monarchy and a spiritual king; we 
are the sovereign, spiritual citizens of a divine 
democracy and a spiritual republic of all being as 
one. Dualism declares that God is the personal 
king of a spiritual monarchy, in whose kingdom 
men are merely servile subjects. Monism declares 
that God is the divine democracy, the spiritual 
commonwealth of the world as a perfect, organic, 
and unitary whole, and that in this spiritual re- 
public of all being, all men and creatures and things 
are equal, sovereign, divine, and spiritual citizens. 

For this dualistic theory of the world as a spir- 
itual monarchy, of God as a spiritual monarch, 
and of men as his spiritual subjects; there is not 
one particle of reliable evidence to-day. For the 
monistic theory of the world, however, as a spir- 
itual and divine democracy, of God as this spiritual 
and divine democracy itself, and of all men and 
things as the equal, sovereign, divine, and spiritual 
citizens, the evidence is overwhelming in its favor, 
and is growing every day. 

We can speak of a king or president as " per- 
sonal," but of a country, nation, or people, only 



THE GOD WHO FINDS HIMSELF 167 

as impersonal; but as a matter of scientific and 
philosophic truth we ought to speak of the latter 
as super-personal. Unity precedes multiplicity 
and the One precedes the many in the order of 
evolutionary development. The One and the unity 
was first and original; the many and the multiple 
are secondary and came from the One through its 
subdivision and fractionalization. The One did 
not lose its absolute and fundamental unity when 
it divided, or rather differentiated, itself into many. 

The many are never anything more than the 
mere fractions of the integral One. Personality 
and individuality is only another name for frac- 
tionally, and the unitary whole which is consti- 
tuted of such personal and individual fractions is 
always something higher in the scale of being than 
such fractionals are themselves. 

If a citizen is a " person," then a " state " is 
a super-person; and if men are persons and indi- 
viduals, which really means that they are "frac- 
tionals," then the universal whole is a supreme and 
sublimely super-personal being because it is the 
integral, original, and parental whole. We speak 
of a king or president as " he," but of our vastly 
greater " country," " nation," or " people," we 
say " it." But as a nation is greater than any 
of its citizens, even the highest; as a whole is 
greater than any of its parts, as an organism is 
greater than any of its organs ; — so the universe, 
the infinite, eternal and all-embracing organism of 
the world, is supremely, sublimely, and infinitely 



J> 



168 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

higher and diviner than any possible part, either 
real or imaginary, that can exist within it. And 
its inconceivable dignity and divinity is not in the 
least diminished because our imperfect instru- 
ments of language compel us to speak of " it 
" it," instead of as " he " or " she." 

" A firemist and a planet, 
A crystal and a cell, 
A jellyfish and a saurian, 
And caves where the cave men dwell; 
Then a sense of law and beauty, 
And a face turned from the clod, — 
Some call it evolution, 
And others call it God. 

A haze on the far horizon, 
The infinite tender sky. 
The rich, ripe tint of the cornfields, 
And the wild geese sailing high; 
And all over upland and lowland 
The charm of the golden-rod, — 
Some of us call it Autumn, 
And others call it God. 

Like tides on the crescent sea-beach 
When the moon is new and thin, 
Into our hearts high yearnings 
Come welling and surging in, — 
Come from the mystic ocean 
Whose rim no foot has trod, — 
Some of us call it longing, 
And others call it God. 



THE GOD WHO FINDS HIMSELF 169 

A picket frozen on duty, 

A mother starved for her brood, 

Socrates drinking the hemlock, 

And Jesus on the rood; 

And millions who, humble and nameless, 

The straight hard pathway trod, — 

Some call it consecration, 

And others call it God." 3 



3 W. H. Carruth, " Each in his own Tongue." 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE GOD WHO REALIZES AND PER- 
FECTS HIMSELF 

The philosophy of evolution is, in reality, a 
philosophy of self-evolution. It is a theory of the 
self-development and self-fulfillment of the one and 
only Being of the world. It is, therefore, a phi- 
losophy of self-realization and self-completion. 
That is its most significant characteristic, and its 
profoundest law and truth. It is for this reason 
that the ethics of evolution is an ethics of self-re- 
alization, that the religion of evolution is a reli- 
gion of self-revelation, that the politics of 
evolution is a politics of self-government and de- 
mocracy, and that the economics of evolution is 
one of self-management and cooperation. 

For the same scientific and evolutionary reason 
the theology of evolution (or, as Dr. Paul Carus 
would call it, the " theonomy " of evolution) * is a 
theology and theonomy of self-realization and self- 
idealization, of self-fulfillment and self-perfection. 
The God of science and evolution must be a God 
who completely realizes and perfectly fulfills him- 

i By theology we may mean the theory and knowledge of 
God; and by theonomy we can mean the practise and reali- 
zation of God in human life and experience. 

170 



GOD WHO REALIZES HIMSELF 171 

self in the world and man ; who successfully ideal- 
izes and perfects himself in the temporal process 
of his own evolution. The God of science and of 
evolution is the self-realizing and idealizing God 
of the self-realizing and idealizing man. It may 
be said that this conception of the nature of God 
is anthropomorphic. We acknowledge without 
hesitation that it is, and affirm, moreover, that 
every conception of God is, must be, and ought to 
be, anthropomorphic, or else it is a mere abstrac- 
tion. The fact that this conception of God is 
natural and more or less human in character is 
not an evidence that it is false or fallacious, but 
is rather an evidence of its truth. For, as we 
have said before, God and man are not two sepa- 
rate beings, but they are one, as whole and part, 
organism and organ, or unitary being and its high- 
est, most characteristic and distinguishing func- 
tion are one. The nature and character of any 
being is determined by what it does and by its es- 
sential and intrinsic function. A being is what it 
does, a structure is what it functions, for the 
function is the essential end and purpose of its ex- 
istence, while the structure is a mere means and 
instrumentality only. The charactristic and su- 
preme function of any being determines the essen- 
tial nature of that being. The nature of man is 
determined by his highest and most characteristic 
organ and function, — viz., by his brain and his 
function of thought. He is the brainy animal and 
the thinker. So for a similar reason the nature 



172 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

and character of the universe as a vast world-or- 
ganism is determined by its highest and most char- 
acteristic organs and its profoundest and most 
significant functions. And these are precisely the 
ones which belong to and characterize man, and 
other rational beings like him in other worlds, no 
doubt. For man, it is perfectly plain to see, is 
not an independent, isolated, and autonomous part 
of the universe any more than is a little blossom 
at the top of a tall and mighty tree. As the little 
flower at the top of the tall and stately tree is 
merely an efflorescent organ and function of the 
whole great tree, so man (or any other being like 
him in other worlds) is merely a spiritual efflores- 
cence and function of the whole universe as a uni- 
tary, organic, and indivisible whole. As man's 
brain and thought characterizes him as the brainy 
and thinking animal, so in like manner man him- 
self, and other beings like him, characterize the 
universe as a humane, anthropomorphic intelli- 
gence, and as the rational and spiritual being of 
all existence. The whole takes its character and 
its designation from its highest, profoundest, most 
significant and characteristic part. As we call a 
plant a flower, a manual worker a hand, and a 
directing manager a head, so in this supreme in- 
stance we bestow the name and characteristics of 
humanity upon the Universe as a divine and god- 
like, yet humane and manlike, whole; and we are 
perfectly justified in doing so. God is the hu- 
mane, anthropomorphic, and rational spirit of the 



GOD WHO REALIZES HIMSELF 173 

universe, of which man is the highest and most 
characteristic organ and function. The Bible 
says that God made man in his own image and 
likeness, and this is practically true, but the con- 
verse proposition is equally true, — viz., that man 
has always made God in his own image and like- 
ness, and is perfectly justified in doing so, for he is 
the highest, most characteristic and distinguishing 
function of the divine and universal whole. As 
there is not one law and principle of action for 
man's brain, and another and different one for his 
whole body; as there is not one law of action for 
the earth and another and different one for the 
solar system; and as there cannot be one law of 
action for the solar system and another and differ- 
ent one for the sidereal system or universe at large ; 
so there cannot be one law of action and evolu- 
tionary procedure for man, the human organ and 
function of the universe, and another and a differ- 
ent one for God, the divine organism and universal 
whole of being. As the evolutionary law of man's 
life is self-realization, self-fulfillment and self- 
idealization, so the evolutionary law of God's life, 
as a universal and unitary whole, must be self- 
realization and idealization, self-fulfillment and 
perfection. The God of evolution must be a God 
who realizes, idealizes, fulfills, and perfects himself 
to the uppermost of his nature and the utter- 
most of his powers, in the life of the universe 
and the consciousness of man. The theology of 
evolution is a theology of self-revelation, self- 



174. THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

discovery, self-knowledge, and self-understand- 
ing ; and the theonomy of evolution is a theonomy 
of the self-realization and idealization of the one, 
only, and divine Being of the world. 

Shall the universal Spirit of the world ever suc- 
cessfully, happily, and fully realize and perfect 
itself in the world and man? In the drama of 
God's universal life shall the cosmic curtain fall 
on a cosmic denouement which spells the absolute 
failure of all rational ends and the frustration of 
all legitimate human hopes? Shall the cosmic 
curtain fall on a bitter cosmic tragedy or upon a 
heroic and godlike, but victorious and glorious, 
cosmic romance? The philosophy of evolution, 
with its " struggle for existence " and its laws of 
war and strife, has produced a revolution in the 
life-ideals of man. It has destroyed forever the 
puerile and effeminate ideal of the traditional 
heaven, and has compelled the adoption of more 
manly and godlike ideals of existence. It has 
compelled man to ask himself the question : " If 
tragedy is the highest form of art, is it also the 
highest form, and spiritual ideal, of life ? " It 
has put iron and flint and rich red blood into man's 
spiritual ideals of existence, and from this time 
forward man must have a strenuous and heroic 
ideal of life at the very least, with the possibility 
of being compelled to adopt a really tragic one. 
The struggle for existence, the strife for suprem- 
acy, and the striving for spiritual satisfaction and 
fulfillment are eternal facts which must henceforth 



GOD WHO REALIZES HIMSELF 175 

be included in any true ideal of existence. It 
seems impossible to conceive of tragedy, in the 
sense of the genuine failure and defeat of the spirit, 
as a possible or real ideal of life. It seems as 
though we must draw the line on a real cosmic 
tragedy. But short of actual tragedy we may 
have a heroic and strenuous ideal of existence, 
which would test and try the souls of gods and 
men. Let it be anything but the actual failure, 
defeat, and discomfiture of the innermost soul of 
God and man, and we may cheerfully accept it. 
The question arises, — what would constitute a 
spiritual tragedy in the life of the universe? 
What would constitute the defeat, failure, and dis- 
comfiture of God and man? Opinions may differ, 
but it seems as though one of the greatest spiritual 
tragedies to a being who has the capacity and the 
burning passion to know, and above all things to 
know himself, would be the signal and bitter fail- 
ure to discover and understand who and what he 
is, and why and how he really exists. Shall the 
eye that sees all things never see itself? Shall the 
spirit that knows all things never know itself? 
Shall the veil of ignorance and mystery never be 
lifted from the soul of man? Shall it live and die 
forever, with an unanswered question on its lips 
and an unsatisfied longing eating out its heart? 
This would be a spiritual tragedy indeed. Has 
the capacity to know and the passion to know been 
developed in man, only to be frustrated and de- 
feated at last; and is man, as a knowing being, 



176 THE GOD WHO FOUND HIMSELF 

never to fully realize, complete, and fulfill himself 
as such? Is the self-realization of the knower 
never to be perfectly achieved? In the light of 
the law of evolution I think we can give a hopeful 
answer to this question. If the Being of the 
world is essentially a self-reajizing and self-ful- 
filling being, as the philosophy of evolution teaches 
us, then we have good and sufficient reasons for 
hoping and believing that this self-knowing and 
self-knowable Being of the world will finally know 
itself essentially at last. " And we shall know as 
we are known." " Know thyself " was one of the 
profoundest injunctions of ancient philosophy, 
and it was also, we believe, a profound prophecy, 
which the evolutionary process in due season will 
fulfill; and man shall some day know himself and 
know his God. But there is no royal road to this 
divine consummation except the right royal road 
of manly and godlike struggle and endeavor. 
" And they shall know the truth and the truth 
shall make them free," — free from ignorance and 
blindness, uncertainty and doubt; and man, the 
knower, shall realize and know himself at last ; and 
God, the Knower shall realize and know himself in 
man. 



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